


Obsess Over You

by SnitchesAndTalkers



Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy
Genre: Anal Sex, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Lies, Los Angeles, M/M, Manipulation, Oral Sex, Patrick is not as smart as he thinks, Smut, Stalking, Voyeurism, escorting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-16
Updated: 2018-11-20
Packaged: 2019-08-03 01:41:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 34,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16316723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SnitchesAndTalkers/pseuds/SnitchesAndTalkers
Summary: Pete - in the midst of an unpleasant divorce - is working on his screenplay but struggling to find inspiration. Working from his West Hollywood apartment, he doesn't see much beyond the walls of his bedroom office and the stretch of the 101 beyond his window.Until someone moves into the adjacent unit. It's not that Petemeansto listen at the wall, he just can't seem to help himself.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [semi_sweet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/semi_sweet/gifts).



> Hello and welcome to this, my own little celebration of the birthday of the wonderful semi_sweet. A truly talented, amazingly supportive writer who, if you haven't read her works already, deserves way more attention than this particular piece.
> 
> I will warn you guys now, there will be some relatively dark themes explored in this fic. Some people are deeply unpleasant and monsters don't walk the street with claws and fangs. Normal-seeming people do terrible things. Please, if you believe emontional manipulation or psychological abuse will be triggering for you, I urge you to find something else to read.
> 
> For those of you willing to walk a dark path, follow me into this nonsense...

Pete supposes, technically, there probably _are_ places where silence is unending, cavernous, enough to drive a man to madness. He’s heard of the anechoic chamber at a lab out in Minneapolis. Apparently, it can induce feelings of psychosis in forty-five minutes. Turns out the human psyche isn’t equipped to deal with an entire absence of sound.

So, Pete knows his apartment isn’t _really_ silent. Saying so would be entirely for effect, a falsehood spun from pretense. There’s the tap of his keyboard for one thing, the hum of the air-conditioning, the sugar-spun fragility of the TV in the unit above. It’s still a lot quieter than Pete’s used to, the shudder of mid-week Dynasty reruns blasting from apartment 12b to 12a stilled entirely.

It took Pete longer that it should, really, to go and lodge a concern with the super. He supposes, grinding the pad of his thumb into his eye socket until his vision peppers purple and glittered with gold, that in the death throes of his marriage, it was hard to think about much else. But grudge matches with Ashlee filled the apartment with noise, with the slam of doors and the scrape of a fucked-beyond-repair relationship bloodying both of their vocal cords. It was only when she left, cute little convertible packed with cute little Louis Vuitton luggage, that he really noticed the silence.

Turns out, the poor old asshole was dead. Just… checked out right in the middle of cooking his TV dinner. Massive heart attack, do not pass go, do not collect two-hundred dollars. Pete supposes there are worse ways to go but now, _now_ , with the party wall robbed of noise, he’s beginning to appreciate how much he likes hearing other people.

The opening bars of The Imperial March buzz from Pete’s phone. He pauses, fingers above his laptop keys and considers it in the manner of a man that’s never seen a phone before. It takes ten seconds, maybe fifteen, for him to blink back into the room, to remember where he is. It’s Andy, which means he’s probably contractually obliged to answer.

Pick up or let it ring out? He’s running out of seconds to make a decision, snarled up in the uncertainty, hands somewhere between the keyboard and no man’s land that stretches across three feet of thrift store, mid-century teak.

He sighs. “Yeah?”

“Hey man, what’s up?” Andy’s many things; colleague, friend, moral guidance. “How’s the script coming along?”

Pete knows what he means. Andy knows that Pete knows what he means. But this is Los Angeles, the city of angels and illusions. Pete smiles. His teeth feel weird in the center of it.

“Oh, great,” he says brightly. “I’ll fire over next week’s to Gee by Tuesday.”

He’s talking about Lake-Effect Kid. It started out as a stupid idea in a coffee shop in Chicago. One of those pretentious, indie places, over a communist print shop where Wicker Park bleeds into Bucktown. A couple of liberal arts students kicking ideas around over caffeine because all the clubs played shitty music and no one trusted them not to get into fights. Something dark, they’d decided, Pete, Andy, Gerard and Gabe, the four of them snickering over half-baked jokes scrawled onto folded napkins. Something that makes people laugh but they never admit it.

The first season, the first goddamn _episode_ , took seventy _thousand_ FCC complaints.

Six months later, they took their first Emmy.

No one admits to watching Lake-Effect Kid, but the viewing figures sure as shit prove someone is doing it. A whole _bunch_ of someones, furtive fingers surfing right to HBO, Sunday nights at ten.

That’s not what Andy means. “That’s not what I mean,” he says, just for clarification. “I was talking about the side project.”

Yeah. The glamour project. The thing Pete announced after too many beers and maybe something more in a bar down in West Hollywood. _I’ll write a movie_ , he announced, like it was as simple as that. Three-minute comedy sketches? He can write those while he’s sleeping (and does, waking up confused with a notebook full of scritch-scratch scrawl by the bed and no memory of when he did it). Movies aren’t so straightforward.

“It’s going great,” he nods even though Andy can’t see him, “a couple more months, I want this tighter than a nun’s pussy. Then we’ll float it for option, yeah?”

“You thought about directors?” Andy asks, just like Pete knew he would. “Maybe some up-and-comers—”

“Fuck _that_ ,” says Pete, affronted on behalf of the script he hasn’t actually written yet. “Someone established. Someone _good_.”

“First time script from a guy who writes the most controversial TV show in recent memory?” Andy teases, a thread of amusement running through his Midwest cadence. “Sure, no big deal. Fuckin’ _Spielberg_ is gonna want in on the ground floor with this.”

“You’re an asshole,” Pete accuses him. Beyond the drywall, beyond cheap paint and a corkboard spiked with scraps of paper scarred with half-formed fragments of potential conversations, Pete hears a voice.

Andy says something back, the pause means it was probably witty and cutting and any other time Pete would be scrabbling to jot it down. But right now, he stares warily at the wall between his apartment and an empty unit. It’s silent again. He holds his breath until it burns and waits...

“Set it down over there.” He bolts upright, desk chair shoved away on squeaking wheels as he struggles to get his ear to the wall. The voice is young, male, melodic.

Pete pulls himself from the wall reluctantly, a magnet drawn to the polarity of the next unit, of the voice beyond. The quivering shake of a compass point twisting, bouncing, settling. He presses his phone to his ear briefly. “I gotta go.”

“Dude, aren’t you—”

“Later.” He hangs up, tosses his phone onto the bed and listens at the wall once more.

There’s the scrape of a bed frame on the other side. Pete knows the layout of this building, knows the way his own bedroom backs on to the master of apartment 12a. They share a party wall along the bedroom, bathroom and a ten-foot section of the living room but nothing else. Back-to-back units with no shared hallways, no shared elevators. The titillation of character-building entirely blind makes Pete’s tongue tingle.

Someone thumps onto the mattress, inches from Pete’s hip. Is it strange to bring the bed in first? Pete can’t decide.

“Shit,” says the man from beyond the wall, close enough that it sounds like he’s saying it directly to Pete, and not to whoever is crashing around in there with him. “I swear to God, I am _never_ moving again!”

*

“So, _he_ says, ‘Yeah, buddy? You think I asked for a fucking twelve-inch _pianist_?’”

The burst of laughter that echoes around the bar is gratifying even if Pete’s convinced it’s entirely fake. That joke was old when he heard it in high school, there’s no way these guys haven’t heard it before. They’re getting the stink eye from the bartender; he’s been looking at them funny since they walked in but he won’t turn them away when they’re tossing fifties around like Jordan fucking Belfort.

They’ve wound up some place he barely recognizes. They tend to stick to the Viper Room but tonight there’s some bullshit indie band playing with a cap on the numbers and a security guard they don’t know on the door. So, they’re tossing back expensive whisky in Bar Marmont and acting like they belong here. Andy’s wearing flip flops. There’s no fucking way they should’ve made it through the doors. He tips a silent toast to Travis and Vicky; the recognizable faces of talent in the nondescript backwash of writing and production crew.

“Did – did you say you got started on the script?” Gabe slurs unsteadily, spinning on his barstool. He’s going to crash and cave his skull in on the floor. Pete will probably laugh.

“Totally,” this is not a lie: twenty pages (12-point courier font, fifty-five lines per page) currently sitting pretty in his MacBook, “do – do you think the world’s ready for like, a _gay_ love story?”

“You know they’re ready for whatever the fuck the studios give them,” Gerard opines, the only one holding onto a thin thread of class with his glass of merlot. “They’ll watch Trump finger bang Dubya for two hours if Fox pays Rex fucking Reed enough to say it’s cinematic.”

Pete nods and tosses back another mouthful of whatever micro brewed craft ale they gave him when he asked for a beer. He’d prefer Miller Lite if he’s being totally honest, but this really isn’t that kind of establishment.

In honesty, the motivation for Pete’s whole script flows directly through a couple inches of stale air separating two thin sheets of drywall and a couple of wall prints straight from Ikea. (So-called “real art” is nothing more than pretentious bullshit, Pete thinks, forty-dollar canvases from Swedish home-furnishing megastores are not.)

The neighbor he hasn’t seen – and probably never will; no shared hallways, elevators or entrances to the building providing a buffer of anonymity – is proving precisely the kind of inspiration Pete needs. He’s so _normal_. He wakes late, spends the morning watching TV and doing his vacuuming at a reasonable hour. He goes out around seven in the evening and gets back around two in the morning. Pete figures he’s probably tending bar someplace.

On the other hand, Pete knows exactly how much the rent is for a one-bedroom unit in the building. He’s not sure a bartender could afford it.

“A love story, though?” Travis phrases it as a question, slurring on too much malt liquor and not enough cheese fries lining his stomach from their trip to Mel’s before they ventured out this way. “When the fuck did you start writing _romance_?” He says _romance_ with the same inflection most people might say _hardcore fisting videos_.

Pete smiles. “I’m a romantic motherfucker.”

He isn’t – he knows this – and there’s a whole list of bullet points in the email inbox of a matrimonial attorney somewhere in the Financial District that proves his inadequacy as a domestic partner. California is a no-fault divorce state, but a good story won’t hurt her alimony case.

“Are you going to share the premise with the rest of the class?” Andy asks, hauling Pete back into the room with the crunch of ice fished from his mineral water sharp between his teeth. There’s a guy on the other side of the bar smiling at Pete like he knows him. Pete raises his whisky glass and winks. “Or do we have to guess?”

Last night, he heard 12b getting fucked. Over an hour of soft, wet moans and faked bitchy reticence. The other guy sounded older, moneyed and totally into giving the faceless man a good time. Pete’s still not sure how he feels about it. He knows he beat the sour taste of his jealousy into his cock and his keyboard, alternating getting himself off with pouring rage into his screenplay. He wrote about asshole, self-centered game-players who don’t know what’s best for them. It’s _that_ sort of love story.

“Fuck you, you can pay twenty bucks at ArcLight to see for yourself.” Everyone guffaws, someone punches his shoulder. He thinks it’s Gabe and is immediately proved right when Gabe pitches straight off that barstool and lands on the floor at Andy’s flip flops.

The guy is pretty; strawberry blonde hair styled so his bangs fall softly to the right. There’s a nice line to his jaw, great cheekbones, and the most incredible, deliciously thick lower lip Pete’s ever seen. Pete leans across the bar, instructs the bartender to take over some fruity, faggy cocktail. He hands over a ten; the bartender keeps his palm outstretched until Pete adds another. Fuck, getting laid in Hollywood is expensive.

“Fucking _ArcLight_ ,” Andy scoffs derisively. “Piece of shit place doesn’t even take black AMEX. You know what the chick at the concession stand said to me? I told her I could buy a goddamn _house_ with that card. ‘Can’t buy popcorn, though,’ she says. Fuck my _life_ , man.”

Pete isn’t listening.

The guy takes the drink with a nod. Then he turns, grins filthily, enticingly and entirely invitingly across the bar at Pete. He’s dressed well, seems to be alone. Is that weird? Pete’s not sure, watching the way the cuff of his beautifully tailored blazer rides up and reveals an expensive-looking watch as he plucks the dumb little maraschino cherry from the electric-blue drink. Eyebrows raised, he trails it slowly along the curve of that thick, soft lower lip. In his pants, Pete’s cock gives a tiny twitch of approval.

Masturbating to the sound of his neighbor getting fucked twelve ways from Sunday may have taken the edge off, but if there’s the possibility of getting his dick sucked, Pete is _in_.

He stands and mutters a half-assed excuse to his friends and coworkers as he moves down the bar. Not too close, he doesn’t want to look _desperate_ or anything. He pauses to examine the wine list; caught in the no man’s land between his friends and the glow of the beautiful man faking like he’s taken more than half a sip of the electric lemonade Pete bought for him.

He’s at Pete’s elbow in a moment, leaning in to take a look over his shoulder. “If you’re into champagne, the Dom Pérignon is sublime,” he says with enough casual indifference to mask the way his fingertips trail lightly over the curve of Pete’s ass. “Or, if you’re like your buddy over there and red’s more your scene, the Margaux is _exquisite_.”

His pronunciation is flawless. It has not escaped Pete’s notice that neither of those recommendations will leave him with any change from five-hundred dollars. This one is definitely educated, probably well-travelled to boot. It’s not that Pete requires scintillating conversation from a one night stand, but still. It’s good to know he’s attracting the high-class ones.

Pete tries to sound classier than he is. “You have expensive taste.” He fails.

He smiles, dripping with intent. “I’m worth it.”

Pete’s halfway through his second glass of Margaux ( _fantastic_ , if anyone’s asking) before he asks for the guy’s name.

“Patrick,” he says, toying with the stem of his wine glass. He has beautiful hands; expressive fingers with firmly masculine knuckles and neat, manicured nails. Unless Pete is very much mistaken, he’s taken maybe two sips of the wine he called _exquisite_. “What can I call _you_?”

This strikes Pete as an unusual way to phrase that particular question. Nevertheless, the lush, pink flush of that sinful lower lip lowers his inhibitions faster than the alcohol replacing his brain cells. “Pete. You can call me Pete.”

“Pete,” he rolls it over his tongue. Then, Patrick kisses him.

Bodies pressed flush in the booth they found off to one side of the bar, his tongue presses into Pete’s mouth. Pete’s never been kissed quite like this before; Patrick’s fingers curled around his neck, his thumb pushed up to the place his pulse hums under his skin. Patrick tastes of breath mints and warm lips, no hint of red velvet decadence or sharp-blue curacao, the scent of his cologne spiced on the air between them. Pete’s heart picks up, fires sparks through his bloodstream as he leans into it. His tongue finds the ridged hardness of Patrick’s teeth, tastes the way they flow into the roof of his mouth.

Teeth find his tongue, nipping sharp until he withdraws, until Patrick can shove him up against the upholstery and learn the way his heart beats in his throat with the curve of his lips. Pete hauls him back by the lapels, kisses him breathless. A hand finds the shape of his cock under the table, discreet. Pete considers the possibility of a spontaneous cardiac arrest in the middle of West Hollywood. He’s pretty sure Gabe could have three sketches based on it by Monday.

When he pulls back, Patrick’s mouth is swollen, pink and damp around the lips. Pete traces them with the pad of his thumb, guts tightening, tingling down into his groin as Patrick sucks slowly at the tip.

Pete smiles and knows it’s wolfish, knows there’s nothing from the way his eyes crease to the way his canines will catch the soft gold of the lamplight puddling around them that doesn’t exude a sense of predatory hunger. “You want to get out of here?”

Patrick nods, so wonderfully wicked in the way his brows arch delicately. “Where’s your car?”

“Uh, at home?” Pete is drinking his own bodyweight in expensive red. If he were a little less buzzed — or even a little less achingly _hard_ — he might think that’s an odd question. But he’s half-cut and full-horny so instead, he shrugs. “I was gonna order an Uber but we could grab a cab. If you can’t wait.”

There’s something odd in Patrick’s smile but Pete’s almost too wasted to notice. _Definitely_ too wasted to care. “Oh, okay. Sounds good.”

The cab ride breaks everything up. It’s bizarre; the sensation of stepping into an elevator with a stranger. Except instead of muzak and swirling carpet there’s Turkish pop radio and Patrick. And a hand on Pete’s cock.

Pete may die here.

They pull up outside of his apartment building. This is momentarily unsettling as Pete doesn’t actually recall telling either Patrick or the cab driver his address. There again, Pete’s just sunk the best part of a five-hundred dollar bottle of wine and god knows how many beers beforehand. There’s every possibility he handed over his address, driver’s licence and social security number somewhere around the time Patrick slipped a hand into his shorts and started surreptitiously tugging tingles through his pubic hair.

There’s an expectant silence. The cab driver is looking at Pete in the rear view mirror. Patrick is looking at Pete from across the back seat. Apparently, tonight is going to be the most expensive lay of his life including his fucking wedding night and God knows he dropped the equivalent of a mortgage back in Wilmette on that. He extracts his wallet and hands the driver whatever bills he finds inside.  

On the sidewalk, he turns for the door to his block but Patrick tugs him away. “Hey, this way, come on.”

The part of Pete’s brain that deals with objecting to pretty-mouthed dudes shut down right around the time all oxygenated blood made its way from his brain to his dick. Pete’s sensibility requires one of those traffic warning signs: Route Ahead Closed — Normal Service Will Resume With the Passing of a Half-Decent Orgasm. They ride the elevator to the third floor shoved up against the wall together. Pete’s got his tongue down Patrick’s throat and his hand down the front of his pants, tugging at a cock that’s still mostly soft.

“You’re so fucking drunk,” Patrick giggles. Pete could point out that he’s not the one struggling to get it up. Instead, he squeezes a little too hard and lets himself enjoy the way Patrick yelps. “Hey, not so rough, okay? We’re here to have a good time, right?”

“Sorry,” Pete says, doesn’t mean it.

The elevator pings before they can say anything else and they stumbletrip their way down a parallel hallway to the one Pete knows. Block A has red carpeting, Block B is blue but most everything else is the same. The same white doors with the same silver numbers dead center above peepholes. Patrick leads him down this twilight zone version of his own apartment building and comes to a halt outside a door.

“Keys, keys, keys,” he mutters, patting down pockets.

Pete hardly hears him. This is because Pete has been punched in the stomach by two numbers and a single letter glittering like an accusation on the door in front of them.

12b.

“You live here?” he asks stupidly. His lungs don’t seem to work right, shutting down around the way his breath stutters.

It can’t possibly be true. There’s no way at all that kismet is hung in such a way to bring him into 12b’s apartment, into his _bed_. There are no Gods or higher powers or cosmic, oogly boogly _bullshit_ working together to ensure that Pete’s going to hear those same soft, wet moans from the correct side of the wall. He shoves his hands into his pockets and pinches hard into the meat of his thigh.

Dorothy, wake up.

Patrick’s mouth is thick-pink and swollen up a little from the pressure of Pete’s. He touches Pete’s cheek as he finds his keys and slips them into the lock with a smirk. “I sure hope so.”

The door swings open. Pete steps into the twisted reality of his own private movie set.

He wants it to be underwhelming; stacks of dirty laundry and mismatched Goodwill furniture. Instead, it’s perfect in every unimaginable detail. Patrick belongs in this apartment, in every framed poster on the walls, in the expensive sound system hiding in the shadows by the windows that look out over the hills. Pete wants to revel in it, to pick up items like exhibits in a museum and see if he can absorb some of that _goodness_ that vibes from Patrick by osmosis.

“Can I get you a drink?” Patrick asks, rubbing a hand over the crotch of his pants.

Pete shakes his head and forgets how not to be an idiot. “No — no, thank you.”

Patrick hustles him towards the bedroom, crowding and pushing him, herding him like he’s an idiot. The hardwood feels off under his feet, a treadmill rolling away from him as the alcohol surges through whatever’s left of his bloodstream and leaves him lightheaded and dizzy.

He’s not thinking about sucking dick when he folds to his knees by the bed, he’s concentrating super hard on not passing out, actually. Then, Patrick’s cock is _right there_ , the soft bulge of it obvious through his pants. It’s been a while since Pete’s sucked a guy off but he’s pretty sure it’s like riding a bike; you never really forget once you’re back in the saddle.

Someone — Patrick presumably — has knocked on a lamp. He scrabbles for Patrick’s belt buckle, tugging, yanking, pulling until it clatters free. Patrick wears expensive underwear, smells of warm, clean cock and fabric softener. Pete mouths him through the cotton until he’s hard, his mouth wet and dirty and Patrick’s pants pooled around his ankles. The world lurches, a tilt-o-whirl spinning him dizzy. If Pete tips over, he’s not sure he’s going to be able to get back up.

“Can I?” he asks, remembering distantly that it’s polite to ask before exposing a dude’s dick to circulated air. “Suck your dick?”

Patrick nods. “Go ahead.”

What Pete lacks in finesse, he decides to make up for in enthusiasm. Patrick’s cock is thick, hard and flushed, the tip faintly slick and shining in the low light leaking through half-closed drapes. For a second, Pete almost loses his nerve, nearly climbs to his feet and tells Patrick he’ll see him some other time but fake it til you make it got him this far. He opens his mouth wide and stuffs Patrick’s cock inside like he’s starving for it.

He wants it to be erotic but instead it’s awkward. His knees are snagged in the tangle of Patrick’s pants and every time he tries to give him the old ‘fuck me’ smolder, Patrick’s untucked dress shirt sticks to the sweat-slick stretch of Pete’s forehead. It’s easier when he gets him on the bed, when he can lay down between Patrick’s spread legs and get his mouth over the warm, waxed skin of his balls. He licks, sucks, pops them into his mouth like fucking hard candy, jerking him off with slow, smooth strokes.  This is a quality blowjob, top shelf stuff; Pete would lose his shit to be on the receiving end of something like this, he’s sure. Above him, Patrick barely reacts.

Pete pulls off with a wet sound, questioning. “Uh — you okay up there?”

“I guess,” Patrick shrugs with a tiny, delicate yawn. He waves his hand dismissively. “It’s fine, keep going, I’m pretty sure you’ll get better at it.”

There’s literally no way Pete heard that right. “Uh — _excuse_ me?”

Patrick sighs, bored. “No, it’s probably my fault, I just assumed you’d know how to suck dick.”

Red, ugly heat coils through Pete’s guts. He bites his lip because he’s sure that, if he doesn’t, he’s going to sink his teeth into the smooth pale of Patrick’s thigh until that bastard apologizes. This is _not_ the way this is supposed to happen. This isn’t the character he’s created on his MacBook. Patrick isn’t doing this _right_ and that leaves Pete impotently, echoingly furious.

“What the _fuck_ ,” he hisses, crawling up the bed, “do you mean by _that_?”

He has Patrick pinned under him, knees and elbows bracketing hips and ribs as he spits venom down at him. Patrick cowers back, wriggling on his ass to get away. Pete shoves down, presses him into the mattress. He’s naked, pinned to the bed that backs onto Pete’s bedroom under the weight of soccer player muscle and a half-decent suit. He’s vulnerable and he knows it and fuck — _fuck_ — if that doesn’t send blood surging sweet to Pete’s prick.

“I — I thought you liked —” he stammers, uncertain for a nervous flutter of a heartbeat then he’s back, smiling gently and relaxing into the grip Pete has on his wrists. “Hey, come on, what’s the matter, baby? You don’t like it like that? That’s fine, sweetie. We can do whatever you want, how do you want this, hmm?”

That, Pete concedes, is more like it. The cutesy, lovey-dovey shit is little much, though. Idly, Pete wonders if he’s going to acquire himself a stalker. He can totally deal with that. He mouths his way along Patrick’s collarbone, shrugging out of his shirt as he licks over the pink pebble tightness of his nipples. Patrick’s chest is as smooth as his balls and Pete is throbbing for him, aching against the zipper of his dress pants.

“’M sorry,” he mumbles, biting down over the crest of a rib. Patrick jumps, moans, arches his hips and spreads his legs, precisely the reaction Pete imagined he’d have when he listened to him through the wall. “You want me to leave?”

He _knows_ Patrick won’t say yes, it still warms him through with satisfaction when he grins, teeth catching the lamplight as his fingers play through Pete’s hair. “You can stay. Tell me what you want…”

What Pete wants is for Patrick to fuck him, to bend him in half and tear him apart with the thick, pink curve of his cock. He wants to come all over the expensive-looking sheets, so full his stomach hurts with it, with Patrick’s hands around his throat until his vision blurs white at the edges.

No one tells the truth any more, not in Hollywood anyway, so instead he shrugs. “You should ride me.”

And Patrick, he grins a little wider and says, “I can do that.”

It’s been too long since Pete last got laid; conjugal rights exchanged for sleeping on the couch, sprinkled with pity fucks on both sides when it all got too much. As he struggles out of pants and shoes, a tangled mess of linen and leather that hobbles him against the mattress, he wonders if he’ll even be able to last. Patrick sucks him off as he takes Pete’s shorts down, groaning adoration into the brackish curl of Pete’s pubic hair like he’s taking the sacrament. His dick twitches against Patrick’s mouth and he bites his lip, swears he can hold it together at least until he’s inside of him.

He sits against the headboard, stroking his cock as Patrick straddles his thighs. Pete kisses him as Patrick fumbles, blind, in a dresser drawer and pulls out lube and a strip of condoms. Carnal confetti littering the comforter. Legs spread, Patrick slicks his fingers and opens himself up, makes it showy and loud. For a stupid second Pete worries the neighbors might hear.

Pete hasn’t been with another man in forever, hasn’t fucked someone’s ass in so long that the heavy heat of Patrick’s prick, his balls, feel foreign against Pete’s stomach. He can hear the slick-slide of Patrick’s fingers, burning with the need to flip him over and watch.

The slippery hand on his cock makes him cry out, an embarrassing teenage sound torn from the depths of his chest. God, but that hand feels good, the thumb sweeping over the ridged crown and mapping the thick, dark vein mapping the underside on each down stroke. Patrick rolls a condom down Pete’s cock with one hand — Pete was kind of hoping to fuck him raw, this is disappointing — cupping his jaw with the other and kissing him as he lines up. Maybe a different Pete would understand the intent in Patrick’s smile, in the way he holds Pete’s face in both hands and licks along his bottom lip, half dare, half promise. Pete gave up trying to figure other people out a while ago.

The thought is lost, a flutter of dry leaves whisked on brisk fall air, carried away down a street Pete doesn’t care to chase them as Patrick slowly, slowly, _slowly_ sinks down onto his cock. Heat. Bright and burning; brilliant yellows, glittering golds and rich, dark reds. Like blood, like the thick, oxygenated slick of it that pumps resolutely away from Pete’s brain and floods his groin with sensation. Pete bites his fingernails into the pale line of Patrick’s hips and assures himself he won’t blow right of the gate.

Patrick pauses, breathes wet and messy against Pete’s ear. “Fuck, you — you feel so fucking _good_ ,” he clenches tight, Pete groans, “yeah, you like that, don’t you? You want me to fuck you? Want me to do the hard work for you?”

It’s slow to start, the long, drawn out pull of Patrick’s slick, tight insides almost unbearable. Pete bites into the damp, salt-stained sinew where his pale throat curves into his collarbone until Patrick yelps and pushes him back. “Easy baby,” he whispers, petting Pete’s hair as he starts to rock against Pete’s hips, “no marks, there’s my good boy.”

Pete likes the praise but not as much as he likes the weight of Patrick’s ass in his hands, the way he can hold him open and feel the slippery, wrapped length of his cock sliding deep into that wanting hole. Patrick whines into his mouth, sucks bruises to his lips as he rolls his hips like low tide. He clenches tight around Pete’s prick, steals any objections or pleas to slow down from his lungs and replaces them with gutted grunts and desperate moans. Pete has never really liked the sound of his own voice, either in a room or in his own head, but he finds he likes it a whole lot better when the slick sound of Patrick’s cock sliding through his fist underscores it.

Because he has something to prove, Pete pushes him back, hears his cock slide free from the tightness of Patrick’s hole, and flips him over. Patrick presents himself, ass in the air and face pressed to the mattress as Pete holds him open once more and, breathing as thick and wet, watches the way his blood-dark cock slides inside.

“Oh God,” Patrick whines, neck craned to look back over his shoulder. “You like to watch, don’t you? That gets you off, doesn’t it? Fuck, you’re so naughty…”

It doesn’t take long like this, one hand on Patrick’s cock, stroking him off with the rhythm of their hips, the other pressed to the small of his back, fingertips bruising into the dimples there. Patrick comes with a gasp like he’s shocked Pete can do this to him, like Pete is impeccable, perfect, the fucking best he’s ever had, his orgasm wet and messy over Pete’s hand.

“Fuck!” he cries out, broken. “Fuck, Pete! Oh God, _yes_!”

Exquisite, bone-deep sensation shudders down Pete’s thighs and back again. Electric heat in the base of his spine as Patrick’s body clenches tight around him, contracting desperately with his orgasm as Pete pushes home, deeptightperfect, and comes with a groan. It’s good, _great_ , the pulsing wetness of it filling the condom as he thrusts weak bolts of desire into the softening depths of Patrick’s willing body.

Finally, he collapses, cock pulling free as he rolls to the sheets and takes a moment to count the swirling fleur-de-lis on the drapes. They’re still open. Anyone in West Hollywood could’ve glanced up and seen them. Pete surges with the hope that someone did.

Patrick wriggles into Pete’s personal space, fucked out and smiling. His hair is a mess of rose-gold around the pink flush of his cheekbones. He looks good for someone that just took a dick up the ass. Chin cupped in one hand, he traces the loop of thorns across Pete’s collarbone and whispers, “Good?”

Pete shrugs, downplays it because he doesn’t want to come on too strong. “I’ve had worse.”

The condom feels uncomfortable, twisted against his softening cock as he reaches down to take it off. Patrick beats him to it, pulling it free and inspecting it carefully as he knots it off and tosses it into the trashcan by the bed. Pete slings an arm over his waist and tucks the pillow a little more firmly under his cheek. The sheets smell like Patrick, his cologne and skin and laundry detergent caught in the fibers. He doesn’t realize his eyes have closed until Patrick nudges him gently.

“Hey, come on, wake up.”

Pete cracks an eye open enough to scowl. “Why?”

“Well,” Patrick draws it out, sounds coy and pretty as he rolls onto his belly and shows the pale curve of his ass. “You didn’t book me for an overnight and I need my beauty sleep. Maybe next time—”

“Book you?” Pete interrupts quickly, sleepy, post-orgasm haze giving way to hidden-camera panic. “I — I didn’t _book_ you, what the fuck?”

“Yes. You did.” Patrick is on his feet before Pete can relocate his center of gravity, snatching at carefully placed sweatpants by the bed and yanking a Bowie shirt over his head as he thumbs through his phone. Pete is naked and vulnerable and does _not_ fucking like it. “Come on, babe. Don’t make it weird.”

Pete has that sharp, itching heat in his belly, that peculiar sensation of a joke he’s not part of. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“This isn’t fucking funny, man,” Patrick snaps; Pete agrees entirely, “I — you don’t get to _do_ this, you booked me, you pay up and—”

“Is this some kind of fucking _joke_ ,” Pete snarls, that same hot fury clawing through his viscera and turning his vision dark at the edges. “What, you’re a fucking _whore_ and now your pimp’s gonna threaten me? I’ll go to the fucking cops, dickhead, this is entrapment! Fucking try me, bro, I—”

Pete’s self-righteous indignation is interrupted by Patrick’s raucous burst of laughter from the doorway. Pete pauses, confused and waiting for the punchline, waiting for some dude with a gun to appear and march him to the nearest ATM, for Patrick to pull out his LAPD badge and arrest Pete for solicitation. Instead, Patrick scruffs a hand through his bedhead and gestures weakly to his phone.

“Dark hair, stubble, five-sixish, wearing a gray suit,” he giggles; Pete still doesn’t get the joke. “ _Early fucking fifties_. Shit. Fucking — _shit_ , dude. I’m _so_ sorry! I — you sound just like my client but I didn’t read the bit about his age. Damn. _Fuck_ , you got one hell of a freebie. Hey, no hard feelings though? Like, no pun intended.”

Pete’s head is spinning and the world no longer makes sense. “You — you’re a hooker?”

“Escort,” Patrick corrects him absently, like he does that a lot, still scrolling through his phone and tapping at the screen. “Seriously man, sorry about this. But, like, it was fun, right?”

Pete nods; it was and he doesn’t know what else to do. He reaches for his pants and pulls them back on, pretends his hands aren’t shaking as he fumbles with his belt. Patrick looks away politely, radiating the desire to get Pete out of his apartment as quickly as possible. Probably so he can replace him with someone that will pay him for his services. Pete’s guts cramp with jealous dislike.

Shoes on and tie rolled up in his pocket, Pete heads for the door. He has to say _something_ ; this is the guy beyond the wall, _his_ Patrick before he even knew he _was_ Patrick. He leans against the doorpost.

“Was it — good? For you?” he asks cautiously.

Patrick shifts his weight from one foot to the other; Pete won’t be able to tell if he’s lying anyway. “Oh, yeah. Super good. _Amazing_.”

“We could,” Pete begins carefully, scratching at the scruff of stubble on his jaw and making eye contact only with the whorls and knots of the hardwood floor, “maybe do it again sometime? If you wanted to?”

“I can get you a business card,” Patrick offers. “You’d need to sign up to the agency. I don’t work Mondays or Tuesdays and I get pretty busy around weekends but…”

There’s a sour taste at the back of Pete’s tongue, bile climbing into his throat. He shakes his head. “No. I meant, like — for real. Dinner and a movie, that sort of thing.”

He won’t tell Patrick the truth; that their lives are separated only by a party wall. That’s _his_ secret tucked safe and warm beneath his ribs. Patrick chews his lip and blushes, a pretty flush that stains his cheekbones as he gestures awkwardly to his record player.

“I’m — I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Pete’s heart plummets somewhere around his knees and freezes, not beating, “I — my job, you know? Dating is kind of — kind of awkward. You seem great! Seriously, really nice but, like, you know? No — no offence.”

Patrick, it seems, requires a little more persuasion to become the man he’s supposed to be, the man Pete imagined through the wall. The man Pete has created in his MacBook. Pete smiles, dangerous, teeth catching on his lip.

“None taken,” he shrugs, opening the door. “I’ll get going, then.”

“You can call a cab,” Patrick offers awkwardly, clearly relieved that Pete is taking this so well. He has _no_ idea. “You could, like — wait here? If you wanted,” it’s obvious, even to Pete, that Patrick wants this not at all, “Or downstairs. There’s a lobby, it’s pretty nice, not shady or anything.”

Pete grins, wolfish. “Don’t you worry about that. My apartment isn’t far at all.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, welcome back to... whatever this is. If you gave it a chance last week and now you're back for more then that's awesome and thank you so much! If you're just giving it a try for the first time then I hope you enjoyed the first chapter and let's see what sort of nonense Pete can get up to in chapter 2.
> 
> Fun fact, I can never remember the titles to most of my fics (which, by the way, reminds me of the old, handwritten FOB setlists with song titles like "Chris") so I give them all random names. The last one was Babydaddytrick, we've had Soultrick and Baby P. This one? Creepete. 
> 
> I'm done rambling, I swear.

Pete, presented with the opportunity to think and reflect, has decided this:

Patrick has no idea at all about what is best for him. This is because Patrick has not had the fortuitousness to read Pete’s screenplay. If Patrick _had_ read the screenplay, he would know that, as the love interest to Pete’s romantic hero, his life will be greatly improved by the presence of Pete in it. It’s not Patrick’s _fault_ per se, but still, he needs to understand that Pete knows precisely what is best for them.

Pete has decided to keep his cards close to his chest, to allow their second meeting to come about organically. Well, _mostly_ organically, even the most ardent love stories require a push now and then. Where would Romeo and Juliet be without Mercutio? Or, like, Bender and Claire without Principal Vernon and the Breakfast Club? So, Pete is waiting, listening, preparing himself for the perfect opportunity to launch the great romance of the twenty-first century.

Gabe calls him a couple times wanting to go over ideas for the next season of Lake-Effect Kid. Pete deflects him with empty promises of lunch meetings at Gabe’s favourite Latin restaurant out in Santa Monica. There’s a few texts from Andy, an email from Gee. Pete is building a fortress in the shape of the screenplay taking form in his hard drive, tossing out ravens in the guise of late-night instant messages from his iPhone to theirs.

He hears a lot through the wall over the course of the next week and a half. Some of it is adorable — Patrick starts rewatching Game of Thrones from the first season, Pete downloads it to his TiVo immediately so that they can watch it together. It matters not that Patrick has no idea Pete is watching at the same time, _Pete_ knows. Other things are less endearing — Patrick brings home seven different men over the course of ten nights. Pete has never met any of them  but he despises each one. He sneaks down into the parking garage when by Guy Number Four and scrapes his house keys along the driver’s door of the Mercedes parked in the guest spot next to 12b’s BMW. A scrawled, messy IV that no doubt means nothing to that douchebag. He’ll add another each time.

(He hopes that, one day, someone will make the link. That they’ll look at their car door and know how many came before them. He doubts that anyone else possesses the strength of intellect to know a roman numeral when they see one.)

So Pete listens and Pete waits and, twelve days after the pinnacle of Pete’s existence so far — experienced on high thread count sheets in the bedroom of someone he can’t think of as a stranger — Pete is presented with his second stroke of unimaginable luck.

“Yeah, no way, totally,” Patrick’s voice holds that peculiar inflection that suggests he’s on the phone, stilted half-sounds of conversation breaks that Pete isn’t privy to, “yeah, I heard about that... On the roof, Saturday… Well, _yeah_ , I’m pretty sure most people will be in costume it’s… Don’t be a _dick_ , it’s Halloween! Throw on a fucking — a Walmart mask, call it quits… I don’t know, I haven’t—”

He moves away from the wall, into the kitchen, maybe. It doesn’t matter; Pete is already turning the drawer under his coffee table upside down and inside out in an attempt to find something that jumped from inconsequential to imperatively important. He finds it, heart thud-thumping somewhere between panic and relief, stuck between a takeout menu and a flyer for domestic services.

Does Patrick have flyers, Pete wonders; that gorgeous cock, those eyes, a phone number, services rendered with a neat little price list? He swallows down bitter bile and concentrates on smoothing out the page in front of him: a Halloween party for the residents of the apartment building and their guests, up on the roof terrace at nine on Saturday. There’s no way Patrick could’ve been talking about anything else. Pete smiles and finds it feels a little more natural than it once did.

Patrick is clearly a positive influence on him.

*

The problem most people run into when they choose their Halloween costume, is that they overlook the little details. They don’t think about the practicalities of wearing a bulky costume, of drinking bottles of cheap beer around cheaper fangs picked up from the local party supplies store. They don’t think about the minutiae that makes a costume jump from laughable to laudable.

Pete isn’t most people.

He wears a polyurethane mac over his favourite suit, fake blood splashed across the chest, and carries the most realistic novelty ax he could find on Amazon. He adds a little hair from his hairbrush to the thick clog of red corn syrup smeared across the blade. Those are the details everyone notices.

“Who the hell are you?” someone — some _idiot_ — asks by the cooler, handing over a bottle of Sam Adams with a raised eyebrow as Pete tosses his thirty-dollar cover into the tin on the table. “Some kind of psycho?”

“You like Huey Lewis and the News?” Pete asks rhetorically. The guy shrugs; he doesn’t get it. What kind of philistine hasn’t seen American Psycho?

He sees Patrick before Patrick sees him, the flash of a dark mask over his eyes, his hat tipped low. He has his back to Pete, chatting animatedly to a dude with a riot of thick, dark curls and dark eyes. He doesn’t look like any of the guys Pete has heard through the wall; all older, all sounding like they have wives waiting patiently for them to get back from late night business meetings. This guy is young, eagerly hanging on to every word that Patrick says with the kind of wide, bright smile that sets Pete’s teeth on edge. Pete has no idea who this guy is but he already knows he dislikes him.

The element of surprise works in his favour as he sidles up behind him, a chilled beer in his hand as a peace offering. “Puss in Boots, right? The Shrek version?”

“For the final time, I’m fucking—” rather than clarify what, exactly, he is, Patrick does a remarkable impression of touching a live wire and choking to death on his tongue, “— _Pete_ ? What the fuck are _you_ doing here?”

Pete shrugs and offers him the beer, smile wide and scented with malt and peppermint gum. “I live here.” There’s literally no way that this information will fail to thrill Patrick. For some reason, Patrick resolutely refuses to look thrilled. “I — 12a?”

Patrick appears to be performing frantic mental arithmetic, his eyes darting from left to right as his lips twitch. “Uh — the apartment that backs on to mine? I — that’s _you_?”

“Do the two of you, like, _know_ each other?” Curls asks dubiously, half a protective step towards Patrick. “Do you want me to...?”

Pete has no idea whatsoever what he might have done wrong, or what this asshole intends to do about it but he’s big — bigger than Pete — and solid with it. Before Pete can find out, Patrick laughs awkwardly and waves a hand. “Nah, Pete is just — we met before, right? This is Ray, ” he claps Curls on the shoulder then says precisely what Pete wants to hear, “Could I, uh, talk to you for a second? Alone?”

The rooftop terrace is a disconcerting combination of too small and too crowded, the number of places they can go is limited. Patrick settles for a couple of potted ferns just to the left of the giant chess set. He leans against the wall and tucks his cape back with his elbow, his eyes narrow behind the mask and under the hat.

“Listen,” he says, then pauses. Pete cocks his head and hopes his expression conveys exactly how carefully he’s listening. “Listen,” Patrick repeats; Pete wonders if he’s not listening hard enough and leans a little closer for good measure. Patrick, irritatingly, leans back. “Why didn’t you tell me we lived in the same building?”

The answer to this is simple. Pete wonders if maybe Patrick isn’t an intelligent as he initially thought. “When should I have mentioned it? When you were balancing on my balls or when you asked me to pay you for it?”

The twelve inches or so of dry California air between them crackle. Patrick looks torn between laughing and socking Pete in the jaw.

“No one knows,” he mutters to the 101 below them. “Look, man. I’m new here and I’d really like to keep my private life private.”

Pete, an asshole, can’t resist pushing a little further. “Knows about what?”

There’s a real possibility that Patrick is about to attempt to shove him over the side of the roof. Pete holds his breath and resolves to drag him down, too. Instead, Patrick sighs and rubs his thumb along the flushed-up curve of his lower lip.

“Could you not be an asshole about it?” he asks. Rather than push him further, Pete shrugs. “I’m not going to stand here and apologize to you about my job, okay? All I’m asking for is a little — discretion.”

A fine line rests between an asshole who is loveable and one who is simply a dick, Pete suspects he may be straying far too close to the latter and pulls it back with a smile.

“You’re Zorro, right?” he murmurs, charming. He gently grasps the clasp of Patrick’s cloak between his fingers, lets them trail along the underside of Patrick’s jaw. He’s almost certain he’s not imagining the reluctant smile that tugs at the corners of Patrick’s lips. “Hot.”

A blaze of heat follows the line of Patrick’s fingertip as he smudges it along the shoulder of Pete’s mac. “And I suppose you’re here to return some video tapes, Mister Bateman?”

“You get it?” they’re leaning a little closer now, elbows propped on the wall, Los Angeles vibrating through the soles of Pete’s shoes, rolling endlessly out to the Pacific, “I was starting to think I was a little weird…”

That’s not exactly up for negotiation. When he was a kid, Pete’s mom used to declare that he marched to the beat of his own drum. He realizes now, as an adult, that it meant she didn’t understand him. No one else has really managed it since but that’s their loss, not his.

“Come on, Ray’s by himself, we should go hang out, get to know our neighbors.”

None of that matters, Ray least of all, the only consideration Pete can spare is for the way Patrick looks when he smiles, the way it crinkles into the corners of his eyes, the way he snags the pink plumpness of his lower lip between his teeth. There’s a possibility that Pete may do something unsettling if he doesn’t get Patrick into his bed, if he isn’t presented with the opportunity to learn the way his pale skin looks next to Pete’s bedsheets.

So, Pete is charming. Erudite and amusing, he tells television production anecdotes and awards ceremony behind-the-scenes tabloid fodder stories until Patrick and Ray are helpless with laughter. In honesty, he wishes Ray would take the hint and fuck off but, generally speaking, voicing that kind of thing doesn’t seem to make him many new friends. He bites his lip and waits for Ray to find an elsewhere to be, a someone else to speak to. It doesn’t happen.

Not that Pete is in a position to judge, exactly. This building has been his home for the past four years, ever since he upped and left the duplex in Glendale where he started his married life. Forty-eight months and he’s barely on nodding terms with any of the people sharing jokes over badly-cooked burgers and beer bought in bulk from Costco. Apparently Ray lives right above him and they’ve never exchanged so much as a hello in the elevator.

“Hey,” says Patrick, when Pete points this out, a frown creasing his brow (Pete can only see this because Patrick abandoned his hat right around the time Pete shrugged out of his mac, his hair is a mess, Pete wants to sink his hands into it and haul that lush-lipped mouth down over his cock), “did you guys hear anything about cars getting scratched up down in the parking garage?”

Immediately, Pete resolves to keep his damn mouth shut. He shakes his head and shrugs, busying his hands with turning his beer bottle over and over. “I didn’t notice anything,” and, because he needs that warm glow of satisfaction that comes from knowing he made an impact, he adds, “did, uh — did something happen?”

“Nothing,” Patrick shrugs at his shoes. “It doesn’t matter, just kids fucking around.”

“We should speak to the building committee,” Ray opines drunkenly over his concoction of bacardi and apple juice. Pete’s too old to drink shit mixed by a bunch of kids barely out of college; he should’ve brought up a half-decent scotch. “Maybe we could get some security cameras down there?”

What the hell is this guy’s problem? It’s not like _his_ car was damaged. Pete shrugs, an elegant self-portrait of ennui. “It’ll hurt real estate value if it looks like the building has an issue with property damage. Some of us _bought_ our apartments.”

“Maybe…” Patrick’s voice slips away, carried off on the breeze and out to the hills. “Weird, though.”

It gives Pete a glow of satisfaction to know that Patrick’s thinking about something _he_ did. _That’s_ possession; the shuddering delight of knowing that he owns a small corner of real estate in Patrick’s thoughts. It’s the kind of lazy, unbidden supposition that might surface in the middle of Ralphs while he’s doing something entirely banal like weighing up the relative merits of Cheerios versus Cinnamon Toast Crunch or debating bagels over bialy. If Pete has learnt one thing over the course of his time roaming the surface of this lonely blue orb spinning through space, it’s this: thoughts are thoughts be they negative or positive.

It’s nice to get attention.

“You want to dance?” Patrick asks and Pete’s about to determine the many ways he can ruin Ray’s life before he realizes the question is directed at _him_. “Yeah, you. Come on, dipshit, dance with me.”

Whoever’s manning the docking station is playing Kesha and Patrick’s clearly sunk enough dubiously mixed cocktails that his breath smells of the middle-ground between rum and reckless decisions. Pete grabs him by the hips and sways to the beat.

“I’ve been thinking,” says Pete , but casually, like this is shiny-new and just occurring to him, rather than being the focus of every waking thought — and most  sleeping ones — since Patrick leaned over the wine list at Bar Marmont, “about you and me.”

Against Pete’s neck, Patrick’s mouth moves. It slides with slow intent over his pulse point, tracing shadows and adjusting, rewiring, every single nerve ending from his throat to his heart to the pulsing tingle of his groin lit up and burning. “Mmhmm?” he says — moans — breathing damp and sweet against Pete’s suddenly too-tight skin. His tongue darts out, kittenish, catches the stubbled edge of Pete’s evening beard growth. “And?”

“I mean,” and here Pete pauses, fingers drifting through the coppery-blond at the nape of Patrick’s neck, tips testing the ridged notch where his skull meets his spine, “I’d really like the chance…”

And Patrick, he looks up, eyes endless and lips sticky-sweet with fruit juice and spirits from the optics set up on the table. His eyes are glitter and gold and Pete’s almost sure he’s wasted. This feels significant given the way he avoided booze when he was working, the way he barely mouthed at expensive margaux. Perhaps this is the first step on the yellow brick road.

They’re kissing before Pete truly comprehends what’s happening. His mouth — and cock — grab the baton long before his brain has caught up. It’s deep, open-mouthed, the slick wetness of Patrick’s tongue sweeping against the roof of his mouth as his hand grasps along Pete’s jaw and hauls him greedy close. Pete chokes, or something close to it, stuttering on the desperate groan pushing over his lips. Funny, he barely noticed Patrick maneuvering them over behind the potted ferns until now, his back to brickwork that’s clinging to the warmth of the sun that dipped below the horizon three hours ago. He digs his fingers into Patrick’s belt and bites a prayer into his lower lip.

Pete’s never been one for exhibitionism, more of a voyeur, but the plant is just about thick enough to hide them and he’s just about drunk enough to convince himself he doesn’t care. He thrusts his half-hard dick against Patrick’s hip bone and grunts curses into the sticky-wet depths of him, lost in the dark way his mouth bleeds into his lungs.

“You should come home with me,” he opines between kisses slicked to Patrick’s throat, to his jaw and across the sensitive shell of his ear. Patrick shivers under his hands, under his mouth, desperate and squirming and, unless Pete’s very much mistaken, throbbing hard. “Or we could head inside, anywhere, God I want…” he trails off; there’s no way to articulate what it is he wants. “Please.”

“I shouldn’t be doing this,” Patrick whispers, his hand shaping Pete’s cock through his pants, searing impossible heat through the tingling tangle of nerves where Pete’s sure he once had skin. “I should—”

Pete takes the words, steals them, swallows them in the way he wants to swallow Patrick’s dick. He pulls him impossibly closer with a large hand cupped to the back of Patrick’s skull, kisses him breathless and woozy. Patrick sways from toes to heels and back again, leans into Pete like he needs him to retain verticality.

In the not-quite-darkness, Pete whispers, “Come back to my place.”

“I want,” says Patrick, then says it again, “I want. I _want_.”

Want, take, have. That’s what Pete wants to say. Instead he grabs Patrick’s hand, tugs him through the bodies swaying on the dancefloor. It doesn’t escape Pete’s notice that Patrick doesn’t spare a glance across the roof terrace at Ray, Pete considers raising his middle finger at that crestfallen face in triumph. The iPod has switched to something slow now, hands roaming, heads on shoulders, they avoid couples like cataclysmic planet collisions, spinning their own map through stardust and down into the darkened hallway by the elevator. Pete is halfway to his knees before Patrick stops him.

“You _want_ ,” Pete reminds him, twisting against the hold Patrick has on his hair.

It transpires that Patrick isn’t as drunk as either of them imagined. He leans back, counting cracks in the ceiling as his adam’s apple bobs furiously in his throat. “Not tonight.”

Pete’s smile is fixed, rictus, molded into the stretch of sinew under his cheeks as he asks, voice flat. “Then _which_ night?”

“Don’t be like that,” says Patrick, his mouth soft against Pete’s for a moment. “Take me out, someplace nice, _convince me_ that this isn’t a shitty idea. Then, maybe.” He bites into the soft, sensitive underside of Pete’s jaw in time with a slow squeeze of his cock. Pete hasn’t come in his pants since he was thirteen but right now, it’s a close-run thing.

“Tomorrow?” he asks, and Patrick nods. Pete’s dick is so hard, burning heat through the crotch of his pants and branding into Patrick’s thigh through two pairs of pants. “Shit, what am I gonna do with this, exactly?”

Patrick’s laugh is soft, musical. “I’m sure it was covered in health class.”

Instead of replying, Pete shoves him into the elevator and leans up against the door close button until his mouth is wet, red and swollen-tender from the weight of Patrick’s lips.

They part at Pete’s floor; Patrick will ride down to the ground floor and circle around to his own side of the building. Pete will listen to him through the wall. In the dimness of the hallway, Pete’s mouth moves without his instruction or consent. “I could walk you home.”

“Don’t Pretty Woman me,” Patrick says, stepping back against the wall of the elevator, “I can get to my apartment without your help. Hey,” he softens, tilts his head like he can sense the irritation drenching through Pete’s blood, “I’ll knock on the wall, huh? Let you know I’m safe?”

He’s teasing. Pete might care when he thinks back on it but doesn’t right now.

“Goodnight,” Pete murmurs.

Patrick’s clutching his hat, his mask, hair mussed as he grins filthily. Before the doors can slide closed, he quirks up the hem of his untucked shirt, slips it casually up against his chest. Cream pale skin and Pete’s cotton-dry mouth, the wet, pink tip of Patrick’s cock above the top of his belt. He rubs his thumb against it, pulls up slow enough that viscous pearl precome stretches sticky from the head of his dick.

“Sweet dreams,” he says, and the doors slide shut.

In the low twilight glow of the hallway light, Pete gapes, open-mouthed, at the elevator door.

*

If religion has any basis in reality Pete, by rights, should go blind for what he does behind the closed door of his apartment.

*

_Someplace nice._

That’s what Patrick said in the cavern of an elevator car scented with lemon Lysol and desperate carnality. Pete’s not sure what _nice_ means, so he figures it’s probably synonymous with _expensive,_ books a table at Taix on Sunset Boulevard and hopes for the best.

Patrick shows up twenty minutes late and wearing deliciously expensive cologne under his beautifully tailored gray three piece suit. No tie, top button popped.

Meanwhile, Pete is trying to figure out his best side in the mirror-dark reflection of the restaurant window, turning his head this way and that. He looks good, he knows that, but it means he jumps, startled, when reflected-Patrick appears like a ghost over reflected-Pete’s shoulder, the place settings rattling over his knees. Patrick laughs and drops a kiss to his forehead, sweet, unimaginably tender.

“Hey,” he drops into the seat opposite Pete, illuminated by the candles between them and mood-lighting dim enough to encourage intimacy. “Did you order yet?”

He doesn’t apologize for being late despite Pete leaving an entirely appropriate pause for him to do so. “No,” he laughs with a steel-sharp edge to it. “I was waiting for you. For twenty minutes.”

Patrick smiles but still doesn’t apologize, leafing through the menu, fingertips grazing the heavyweight paper.

“Have you been here before?” he asks lightly, tapping the tabletop with his knuckles.

“I brought my ex-wife here for our first anniversary,” across the table, Patrick’s eyebrows rise but he doesn’t look up, “she didn’t like it.”

“What a _fantastic_ recommendation,” Patrick shrugs out of his jacket and hands it to the maître d’ with a bright smile, “was it cited in the divorce?”

Patrick is, almost definitely, making fun of him. If this is lighthearted, coupley affection dressed up in teasing, Pete will take it. If he’s being laughed at, he absolutely will not.

“It’s not finalized yet,” Pete shrugs and swigs a mouthful of water, “I’ll keep you posted.”

“I’m dating a married man,” Patricks teeth are dangerous points of light in the darkness of his smile, “How avant-garde.”

Pete is saved from the possibility of pointing out the foibles in Patrick’s own dubiously aligned moral compass by the arrival of the waiter.

“Are you ready to order, gentlemen?” his accent is heavy, European.

The menu is entirely in French but Pete has had the better part of a half hour to approximate his responses. He has no idea what he’s ordering but there’s literally _no way_ he’s going to admit that. He smiles, confident, and prepares to bluff his way through this. “Yeah, I’ll have, uh, the scallops,” both Patrick the waiter wince, Pete feels every blood cell in his body relocate to his face, fury ricocheting after it, “uh, maybe the — the—”

“Oui, merci,” Patrick doesn’t look up, “Mon ami ici a jamais vraiment essayé la nourriture française, avant qu'ainsi je veuille commencer par quelque chose assez, ah, universelle,” his accent is flawless, like someone swept him up from the fashionable Montmartre district and dropped him into Traix accidentally, “Des escargots sur la coquille à commencer, je pense. Le chateaubriand, deux, plus près de rare que le milieu et, pour boire, que recommanderiez-vous, s'il vous plaît?”

“La Petite Serah est magnifique.”

Patrick shakes his head and rolls his eyes, “Nous aurons le sauvignon, le quatre vingt dix sept. Je vais le goûter en premier, merci.”

“Un excellent choix, monsieur,” and he gathers up their menus and leaves.

Napkin fisted until his knuckles ache, Pete bites his humiliation into his cheek and breathes deeply through his nose. For some reason, Patrick is still refusing to do this right, in the way Pete imagined, in the way Pete _typed_. His tone is far from airy as he snarls across the crisp, white tablecloth. “Well, now I look like a dumbass.”

“Aw, sweetie,” Patrick’s voice is soothing; Pete doesn’t want to be soothed by him, “don’t be like that. I spent a year studying at the Sorbonne in Paris,” he pronounces is _pah-ree_ , like a douchebag, Pete resolves to fuck the smug out of him once he gets him home, “I picked up a little of the lingo while I was out there.”

“You’re fluent,” Pete accuses sullenly. “You’re trying to make me look stupid.”

Patrick is saved from further confrontation by the arrival of the sommelier, a bottle of red balanced in the crook of his arm. They fuss over it like a newborn, sniffing, tasting, spitting (God, he looks good as he does that), discussing finer details in a language Pete doesn’t understand.

“Hey, buddy,” he interrupts them in his thickest Hank America drawl, “we’re in fucking _America_ right now. You wanna speak English?”

“Of course,” the sommelier ducks his head in frosty apology, pouring and leaving them in awkward silence.

“So,” Pete can conjure conversation from nothing, it’s his special talent, weaving words into something everyone else finds enjoyable, “where did you go to school over here?”

“Julliard.” Of course. Why did Pete even ask? “Classical composition. You?”

“DePaul,” Pete counters; it’s not as good as Northwestern and Pete knows that Patrick knows it. “Political Science. My dad wanted me to be a lawyer so I became a comedy writer to spite him. I’m good at that, probably better at it than I am at writing. I find spite motivates a lot of things.”

“Aren’t writers supposed to be amazing at reading people?” Patrick asks, pointing at Pete with his butter knife. “Go ahead, do me.”

Pete hates this kind of game but smiles anyway, chin propped on his hand and elbow wedged obnoxiously on the table. This is easy, though, reciting the details of the Patrick in his screenplay. “Middle class, youngest child. You were spoilt. Good upbringing but daddy didn’t pay you enough attention. Divorced parents, maybe? School was a scholarship thing which you’re proud of, but you’re still kind of pissed that mommy and daddy couldn’t pay for it. How am I doing so far?”

Patrick pushes his fingers through his hair — elegant, pale, those beautifully buffed nails catching the light — and bites into the lushness of his lower lip. Separated by three feet of linen and a stretch of silverware, Pete grins, wide and easy.

“Not bad,” Patrick murmurs, the hint of a flush creeping across his cheeks. “You think I’m a snob.”

Yes, that’s _exactly_ what Pete thinks. “No, I think you appreciate quality,” he pauses, smiles a little wider, “which is why you’re here with me.”

The starter arrives — snails, Pete blanches but braces manfully and reminds himself that sixty-seven million French people can’t be wrong. They eat and they talk, flirtation rising with the volume of blood eagerly preparing to reroute to Pete’s dick at a moment’s notice. After steak and over muscat, Patrick takes Pete’s hand and touches each knuckle in turn.

“Why do you do it?” Pete asks; Patrick raises his eyebrows questioningly. “You know, escorting.”

Silence stretches between them. Patrick doesn’t speak and neither does Pete, nothing but the low murmur of conversation and the clink of silver on tableware echoing on around them. Finally, Patrick shrugs, takes a sip of his wine and considers Pete keenly over the table.

“I do it because I like it,” he begins carefully. Pete can think of no possible way that can be true. In a pack of tarot cards, Pete is The Rescuer, an impossibility if Patrick has no desire to be saved. “I left college with a great degree, I had options. I could’ve gone into the New York Philharmonic, I had the offer, or I could’ve stayed on as a professor.”

He takes a breath and Pete prompts, “Why didn’t you?”

“When I lived in Paris,” and this time he pronounces it properly, by which Pete means he pronounces it like an _American_ , “I met this guy, an attorney or banker or something. Awful old bastard but richer than anyone has any right to be. He used to watch me play piano at this jazz bar in Haut Marais and, one night, he offered me two-thousand euro to go to dinner with him,” Patrick pauses and pulls a face that’s probably supposed to indicate self-deprecation but Pete wills himself to believe is disgust, “We had a passably good night and I went back to a hotel with him. He didn’t even want to touch me, just wanted to watch me get myself off. Easiest cash I ever made.”

This isn’t the tragic backstory Pete was hoping for. “Go on…”

“Not much else to tell,” Patrick grins brightly. “Got back home, did some research. The agency I work for is _super_ exclusive. They charge twenty-thousand to add a new client to the books, no internet advertising, it’s all word of mouth. It’s as exclusive as this sort of thing can get, so it rules out the douchebags. I’m _not_ cheap. That night at the bar should’ve earned me three thousand dollars, and that’s after the agency take their cut, after I’ve paid taxes—”

“Taxes?” Pete cuts in, confused.

“Yes, _taxes_ ,” Patrick drawls lazily. “I’m a fully licensed escort, free to work in the state of California. Paying for company isn’t a crime, Pete, _that’s_ what I tell the IRS I’m paid for. And the happy ending? I consider that a nice little freebie for my favorites.”

“You didn’t even know me,” Pete points out, the dark, wet depths of his guts twisting bitter and ugly at the thought of all of those men — those unworthy, filthy _men_ — laying hands against the peach-soft pale of Patrick’s skin.

Patrick hides his smile in another sip of muscat. “I _knew_ you’d be one of my favorites.”

Something has been troubling Pete since the night they met, a niggling pebble poking sharp into the arch of his foot, a prodprodprod of irritation that won’t recede until he asks. He steels himself with another couple inches of muscat sloshed into his glass, takes a deep breath and speaks quietly. “So, when you said I didn’t — that I couldn’t give head, you meant…?”

“That’s just my thing,” Patrick’s eyes are very blue and very earnest, his lips much closer as he leans in like he can prove his point with proximity, “I’m, well, I guess you’d call it a pillow prince, that’s my USP. The guys that choose me want someone to give them a hard time, someone they can try to impress.” The last of the wine is tipped into Patrick’s glass. “Middle-aged married men who want a nice kid they can spoil.”

“So, you just lay back and wait to be serviced?” Pete asks, caught between intrigue and disappointment, the dull, dark bruises he wants to imagine wound around his throat in the shape of Patrick’s pianist hands fading to nothing. But, still, the thought of him laid out, hard and lazy, and waiting to be ridden through the mattress is not without appeal.

Patrick toys with his wine glass, his lips quirked at the corners as he assures Pete from the far side of guttering candlelight, “Don’t ever assume that my work persona is in any way who I _actually_ am.”

Those two inches of ambergris, perfumed heavy with sugar sweet grapes slide elegantly down his throat. Pete nods to the maître d’ for the check. There’s a low, hard knot of tension right above his groin, the pulsing throb of need aching through his veins as he watches Patrick watch him slide his black AMEX across the table.

“Shall we take a cab?” he asks, their jackets back on and a hand in the small of Patrick’s back.

Patrick shakes his head and murmurs something about already ordering an Uber, a silver Prius rolling up to the curb beside them. They fall onto the backseat in a tangle of hands and eager mouths; Pete would spare a thought for the driver, studiously ignoring them as he talks in high-volume Spanish into his bluetooth headset, but he can’t pretend to care. Pete doesn’t know Spanish but suspects he doesn’t need to be fluent to grasp the basics of what’s being said about them up front. His hand finds the shape of Patrick’s cock and squeezes carefully, testing the beautifully thick length of it against his palm.

“He’s gonna be pissed,” Patrick mumbles into his mouth; Patrick who, presumably, has sucked dick in the back of town cars across this and innumerable other cities.

Pete shrugs, disinterested in the social comfort of an Uber driver he’s literally never going to see again, “Then tip him.”

Somehow, Pete finds himself on the sidewalk outside the art deco splendour of their apartment building, Patrick’s eyes are intent, his hand moreso, stroking under the untucked hem of Pete’s shirt. Pete used to fuck around with a guy in college who was, in many ways, a lot like Patrick; short and blond and small enough that Pete could hold him against the wall with one hand. At his belt, those fingers go rogue and find the darkened spot where flat, shaved stomach becomes pubic hair. Pete momentarily forgets how to breathe but remembers how to write the next scene of his screenplay.

“Are you coming up?” he asks, inclining his head towards Block A.

Because Pete has written this, because he’s crafted it and worked it into exactly what he wants it to be, he barely waits for an answer, catching Patrick’s hand before it can dip down into his pants and find the thick-veined heat of his cock. But, because he wants to ruin everything, Patrick resists.

“I don’t fuck on the first date,” Patrick says, smiling. Pete will knock that stupid fucking grin off his face, he swears he will.

Instead, he says this: “Are you serious right now? You’re a fucking—”

“Gentleman,” Patrick interrupts sharply. Pete bites his lip until the skin gives and tears and his tongue floods coppery with blood. “If you want a second date, you really shouldn’t go slinging names around, okay?”

Aware that the ice he’s treading is treacherously thin, Pete sighs. “Tease. I was going to say tease.”

“Sure you were.” They both watch the Los Angeles traffic roaring by on Franklin, underscored by the dull, endless throb of the 101 behind them. When Pete first moved to the City of Angels, he imagined he’d never get used to the traffic. Now he can’t sleep without it.

“Well,” says Pete, when it becomes apparent that Patrick’s temper tantrum is going to eclipse a wonderful evening, “goodnight, I guess.”

He’s halfway to the door when Patrick grabs him by the collar of his suit jacket and hauls him close enough to steal the air from his lungs. At this distance, his eyes struggle to focus, sweeping in on the lush, pink softness of Patrick’s lips, Patrick’s tongue, Patrick’s _mouth._ In that space, that shivering exchange of molecules hung between them, Patrick’s breath fogging against his lips, he waits.

“You should take a shower when you get inside,” Patrick murmurs. Then he lets go, steps away and walks away around the building and out of sight.

Pete nearly breaks his neck racing up the stairs, throwing off his suit as he hurries to the bathroom. He pauses by his desk, thinks, considers violations of privacy and the acts of honorable men. Then he grabs his dictaphone anyway and stashes it in the shower, against the wall. He’s pretty sure it’s waterproof.

His dick is hard in his hand, smooth, his thumb curling sweet around the flushed, dark head as he strokes himself off under the spray. God, but he wants Patrick, on his knees, soft, wet mouth sucking him, fingers deep inside the hot, tight secrecy of his body, the places no one’s been in years. The slick, wet noise of his hand on his cock almost drowns the tight, soft moan from the other side of the wall.

Pete freezes. It’s a reverse electric shock, sensation starting out at the tingling tips of his slightly numb fingers, gathering in, gaining force and finding polarity until it thunderbolts and coils at the very epicenter, the pulsing throb directly behind his cock.

Pete leans into the tiles like he can slide through them via the process of osmosis if he just tries hard enough, like he can leach into the warmth of Patrick’s body and find his soft, hidden places if only he presses in the right way.

“Oh God, Pete,” Patrick’s voice says, disembodied and far away. Any sense of self control abandons its post, Pete is deserted, an empty shell with a fat, red cock in his hand. “I’m so fucking hard for you right now, so — so _thick_ and — God. I want you to do _everything_ I tell you, you got that…?”

Pete’s soul leaves his body entirely.

“Anything,” he informs the tile closest to his lips, “anything at all, anything you want.”

*

Half an hour later, Pete sits at his MacBook entirely naked and half-hard once more, the fingers of his right hand rattling furiously against the keys whilst his left plays gently with his cock. On the desk next to him, the dictaphone plays on.

Pete won’t feel guilty; these words belong to him now, gifted to him through the wall.

Patrick’s voice shudders desperate, broken with recent orgasm and the unquenched need to feel Pete inside of him, committed to immortality on Pete’s hard drive in 12 point courier font.

“Fuck, babe. I — Jesus Christ, you’re amazing. I’ve never been with someone like you”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Patrick has _no_ idea how right he is...
> 
> Comments and kudos are _awesome_! Seriously, it's so much fun hearing what you think. And no one has yelled at me so far which is... pretty rad. 
> 
> Or come talk to me on tumblr @sn1tchesandtalkers!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! 
> 
> Sorry about the stealth update, I completely forgot about Trick or Pete (see @peterickcreationschallenge for more details!) and realized I needed tomorrow to prepare for that _so_... Have a further instalment of this creepy, disturbed, twisted approximation of a love story a whole twenty-four hours early.
> 
> And, you know, don't forget to come back on Wednesday for Trick or Pete. I could lie to you guys and say I've written something highbrow and literary but... it's porn. It's just porn.

“And what do you think it would take to make you feel more satisfied?”

Pete has been slowly dying, atrophying in the chair across from his therapist for the past forty-five minutes.

It’s not that he’s bad at his job, exactly, it’s that Pete is far smarter than this douchebag can ever hope to be. It’s a little like being psychoanalyzed by a particularly guileless twelve-year-old. Occasionally, Pete wonders why he comes back week after week, but it was one of the things the marriage counsellor suggested way back when he and Ash thought they might have a chance at working out their differences. Before Pete realized that the main difference was that he was right and she was unerringly, unendingly wrong on any and all counts.

(Pete fucked the marriage counsellor. It was easy enough; nothing more than getting her on side, showing her that he was the rational one and Ashlee was the exact opposite. Charming, gentle, crying now and again. Then his looks did the rest and she was bent over the desk, taking his dick ten minutes before she told Ashlee that she really needed to try and see things from Pete’s point of view.)

Therapy is bullshit, that much is obvious, but the plus side is that Dr Trohman has no option whatsoever but to sit and listen to Pete discuss himself for sixty minutes per week. Honestly, Pete is aware that he’s a fascinating subject, he knows his mind doesn’t work in quite the same way as everyone else’s, that he’s superior, smarter, better. Unfortunately, outside the four walls of this office, it’s difficult to find anyone who really wants to discuss that.

Right now, though, Pete has an elsewhere to be. The clock is ticking on with alarming speed towards Patrick’s regular Wednesday-at-six. Pete thinks he’s a lawyer, something like that anyway. The point is, it’s now almost five and LA traffic is ridiculous, he could have left twenty minutes ago and still not make it home on time.

“Pete?” Dr Trohman asks over wire-framed glasses. They look expensive, designer.

Pete can’t remember the question he was asked. “I, uh… Sorry, what?”

“You talk a lot about how you feel unsatisfied,” Dr Trohman – Joe, he keeps insisting Pete should call him _Joe_ – taps his pen thoughtfully against the notepad balanced on his knee. Mont Blanc and Moleskine. There are a lot of messed up assholes paying this guy too much. “How do you think you could resolve that?”

The question startles him. Isn’t it obvious? If everyone around him were a little less stupid, more challenging, fit to parry back his intellect, then maybe Pete would feel more satisfied. But, that’s not the thing a therapist wants to hear, so instead, Pete changes the subject entirely to something he finds far more enjoyable to discuss. “I met someone.”

Joe’s eyes jolt from his notepad to Pete. “Excuse me?”

“I said, I met someone,” Pete repeats, examining his fingernails. “He’s nice. Works in entertainment, went to Julliard, lived in Paris for a while.” Joe is watching him, mistrustful. “Smart, funny, handsome. Has a _huge_ cock.”

“I’m not sure that’s appropriate,” Joe has heard the literal ins and outs of Pete’s sex life with his ex-wife, Pete’s not sure this is the point he should come over all coy. “How do you think he’d feel if he knew you were discussing him like that?”

_Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn._

Pete snorts. “I think it’s a little too late for you to suddenly decide I’m going too far. Don’t you want to ask me about him?”

“I’m not here to listen to a character outline of your latest sexual partner,” Joe’s the kind of therapist who wears skinny jeans to the office, sleeves rolled up to show his tattoos, Pete liked that about him to start but now he thinks he finds it irritating, “but I’m not sure you’re in a place where you should be starting a new relationship. You haven’t – the issues from your marriage are still very much on the table, there’s a lot you can work on before—”

“I’m not a predator,” says Pete; something inside of him uncoils, dangerous, and flexes in response. “I’m not a psycho and I can date who I want. The marriage counsellor told you Ashlee was the problem, not me.”

“I have — concerns,” Joe taps his thumb against his lower lip, “Not necessarily about _you_ directly, but I think there are things you need to address. I’m thinking about referring you for cognitive therapy, maybe you could put a pin in dating until you start. Maybe after a few sessions you could reevaluate this whole thing and—”

There are many things, Pete realizes (abject and out of body) that he would rather do than listen to Joseph Mark Trohman PhD extrapolate further on the shortcomings of Pete’s ability to handle a romantic relationship. He shrugs into his jacket and gives Joe the smile that got the marriage counsellor onto his cock.

“Well, Joseph,” he pauses in the doorway, “I think we’re done here, thanks. It’s been great, I’ve really learnt a lot but I don’t think I’ll be coming back.”

Joe doesn’t move from his leather armchair, eyebrows raised as he watches Pete leave. He can kiss goodbye to the two-hundred dollars a week that slides from Pete’s account to his via the medium of American Express.

For some reason, Joe almost looks relieved.

*

Patrick is playing hard to get.

Since he makes a living selling his ass to the highest bidder, it strikes Pete as more than a little unfair that _he’s_ expected to behave like a high school junior at his first dance for nothing more than heated make out sessions and mutual masturbation in conjoined shower stalls. It seems to have escaped Patrick that Pete works from home, that he spends his days in his bedroom, working on a screenplay instead of his TV show, listening to Patrick make his way through half of the closeted sexagenarians in the greater Los Angeles area.

Pete is at X on car doors now. There have been _far_ more than ten incidents played in pornographic detail through the drywall but Pete is a careful monster. He creeps to the parking garage each time, checking license plates, makes and model numbers. Some come more than once. One filthy, desperate, _pathetic_ asshole has visited Patrick _four_ times in the past two weeks. Pete may upgrade to slashing his tires.

Or maybe his brake cables.

The world will hate what these men make Patrick do, Pete has already made that decision. He pours his vitriol, his spite and his fury, into the screenplay, determined that one day Patrick will watch his love letter and he’ll understand. Pete is an archangel, his words a flaming sword, protecting Patrick from his own bad decisions and the unworthy men that benefit from them.

On the desk, Pete’s phone vibrates, shuddering friction between the handset and the rubberized casing. Convinced that Patrick — talking softly to someone on the far side of the wall — will hear it, that he’ll sense it as deep in his chest as an earthquake, Pete snatches it up and staggers back from the wall. He hurries into his living room where he answers without checking the caller ID. “ _What_ , goddammit?”

“Pete?” It’s Gee, sounding far away, the echo of a voice from the bottom of a lake. Pete inhabits his skin slowly, slipping back from Patrick’s room and receding into his own body. It feels off for a second, too tight, too small, his shoulders rolling instinctively against the restriction. He must make a noise of assent, although he doesn’t remember it, because Gee carries on quietly. “Are you — listen, man. Are you okay?”

Pete is struggling with the way the universe works right now. He’s a sun orbiting a planet, caught in the wrong way around gravitational pull of Patrick, of the wall, of the noises he can absorb if he presses his ear to paint and plaster. He also knows that this isn’t the kind of reassurance Gerard wants to hear.

“I’m fine,” he breezes, flipping through the channels until he finds a Lake-Effect Kid rerun. It’s the skit with the dead grandpa; he _loves_ this one. “Did you call for a reason, or…?”

“Well, it’s just,” Gerard sounds concerned. Something Pete finds wholly unnecessary, “we haven’t seen you at the studio or the office in, like, two weeks. And you haven’t turned in any scripts. I mean, I know this whole thing with Ash came out of nowhere,” that remains Pete’s party line; that she upped and left him without forewarning, that he came home and found the apartment and checking account empty, “but you need to — do you need some time off? Something official? Maybe you could drop in next season and—”

“Are you trying to get rid of me?” Pete asks conversationally. “Do I need to lawyer up? You do remember that my _father_ was the one that drew up our contracts, right?”

“No! No way, man!” Pete is not stupid enough to fall for the attempt to soothe him. “We’re just — we’re worried.”

This is bullshit, or at least, not the whole truth and nothing but the truth. No one is worried about Pete; they’re worried about viewing figures, about the scripts losing direction, about the show taking a nosedive in this, the final season guaranteed by their HBO contract. Pete has always been the strongest writer, they’re nothing without him. What they can see — Gerard, Gabe, Andy — is their cash cow drying up, the lucrative five-season deal that they’ve talked about burning up like Fourth of July fireworks in front of them.

“Don’t be,” against the bedroom wall, the rhythmic thump-thud-bump of the headboard starts up, Patrick moans, operatic and pretty, Pete wonders if he realizes just how thin the walls are, “I have to go.”

“Pete, wait—”

Pete doesn’t wait, thumbing over the end call button and resuming his penance against the bedroom wall. He counts Hail Mary for Patrick in low, steady moans, his rosary replaced with the way his fingertips smooth over the keys of his MacBook. The guy is quick, shooting off with a groan that sounds like he’s choking within the flash of seven numbers on Pete’s bedside clock. Three grand for seven minutes of penetration; does he think it’s worth it?

Does Patrick?

This is easier if Pete imagines his life is a screenplay, a novel, a storyboard laid out for the delectation of TV executives who don’t get the narrative but pretend they do so that they sound smart. His ears ring with canned laughter and the glow of the APPLAUSE NOW sign as Patrick says something that makes the guy laugh. It’s a _nice_ laugh; affectionate, sweet. That, Pete decides, makes it worse. He can picture the way he’ll cup Patrick’s jaw, how he might smooth his hand through the fuck-trashed mess of copper-gold hair and drop a kiss onto the pale, smooth stretch of Patrick’s forehead. How he’ll presume that he’s bought access to Patrick’s heart and not his ass.

All men are basic; a collection of needs and desires grouped under skin, sinew, bone and blood. Pete could end those desires as easily as sliding under his expensive car and slashing his expensive brake cables. A few things pulled loose. After all, only a handful of mechanical parts stand between whoever-he-is making his way home safely to his wife or careering across the I-5 and into the back of a semi-truck. Yes, Pete is a careful monster; some gloves and no closed-circuit television downstairs in the parking garage. No one would know, no one could prove a thing; just another rich asshole smeared across the windshield of his ostentatious Bentley. Maybe the wife will feel relieved right around the time she gets to pick up the life insurance check. Maybe there’s a kid or two — college age; a pre-med daughter or a pre-law son (Pete isn’t projecting) — who won’t notice the loss. Patrick’s left three grand a week down and a little closer to needing Pete for something more than dinner dates.

The apartment through the wall falls silent; the mirror-image, the looking glass world that shimmers beyond Pete’s fingertips. If Pete strains his hearing, goes up onto the tips of his toes like it can drive him closer, he imagines he can hear Patrick padding around his bedroom on bare feet. Collecting a towel, fresh boxers, moving to the bathroom.

Pete moves too, stands against his own black and white tiles and listens until the spray starts up. Can Patrick stand it, the smell of a stranger’s hands, of their mouth, their _cock_ lingering against his skin? Does it make him itch with ill-content until he can swill it away, watch it swirl down the drain, kisses and come washed away with the suds. Beyond the wall, Patrick begins to sing, something low and slow. Pete wants him like this, wants to claim him like unexplored territory, to stake him out as a personal possession.

The shower shuts off. Patrick’s humming now, muffled, around a mouthful of toothbrush and paste, watching himself in the mirror over the sink, no doubt. The bathroom falls silent and Pete trails him along the wall, back into the bedroom where dresser drawers open, hangers rattle and then—

In his pocket, Pete’s phone buzzes.

_You home? Can I come over? x_

He almost shouts his response. It stutters on the tip of his tongue, knife blades of evidence of men that listen through walls. But Pete is _careful_. So, instead, he moves his thumb over the keys and watches the way the words form on the screen. _Give me 20 mins, picking up groceries. Want anything?_

Pete smiles; a clever monster, too. He sits on his couch, still and silent, and waits until it’s appropriate to slam his front door loudly, to crash through his kitchen and make a show of closing cabinets and the refrigerator. Until he can call cheerily through the bedroom wall, “Hey, babe! Come right on over!”

Beyond the wall, Patrick shouts back, “Coming!”

When Patrick finds him, not bothering to wait after he raps his knuckles against the front door, he’s pouring wine in the kitchen.

“It’s like living in an episode of Friends,” Patrick jokes, announcing his arrival against the mirror-shine stretch of Pete’s marble countertop. “Living across the hall would be way more convenient, though.”

It absolutely would not, but Pete’s not about to say that out loud. Instead, he smiles and presses a glass of Californian rosé into Patrick’s hand; he read somewhere that it’s becoming fashionable to drink rosé and Gerard recommended this particular vineyard after his honeymoon spent touring wine country. Sometimes, Pete feels both spectacularly _old_ and spectacularly _boring_.

Patrick looks a special kind of delicious; shower-fresh and dressed in tight, gray jeans and a flannel shirt, soft around the collar from wash and wear. Pete’s never seen him in anything but his Halloween costume and suits; Versace, Hugo Boss, birthday, all the same. He likes this look on him, the way his hair falls over his brow and onto the frames of the glasses Pete didn’t know he needed. They add a charming vulnerability to him as he lowers himself onto the couch and tucks his feet up under his ass, the wine glass cradled in both hands.

“You have a pool table,” Patrick observes with a nod. “Cool.”

Pete runs his hand along the felt. He bought it before Ash left; he imagined it might bring him some happiness to see it in the center of the room, the first strike for bachelorhood and freedom. It seems dumb now. He should’ve bought the home theater system instead. Consumerism makes him feel good, the knowledge he can slap his credit card onto the counter in Bang & Olufsen like he’s swinging his dick. He should probably talk to someone about that. Unfortunately, he no longer has a therapist.

“Good day?” asks Pete, the sound of the headboard still echoing in his ears. Less than an hour ago, Patrick was being fucked, facedown, for cash. His stomach turns; he considers throwing up.

“Great,” Patrick beams at him, every tooth on display then hidden as he takes a sip. “You?”

“Went into the office,” Pete lies smoothly, his conversation with Gerard already consigned to a box in his psyche that he labels Things That Don’t Matter. “Worked on some stuff for the next season, bought some groceries and now here I am. Talking to you. Which is, not gonna lie, basically the best part of my day so far.” Because he’s masochistic, Pete can’t resist continuing. “Have you been — working today?”

And Patrick lies as easily as Pete. “No, quiet day. Ran a few errands, you know?”

Pete doesn’t like this game when Patrick doesn’t play fairly. He raises an eyebrow. “Really?”

“Really,” Patrick smiles without guilt, traces his fingertips along the ridge and bump of the buttons on Pete’s TV remote, “Day off.”

It’s interesting that Patrick will lie to him. He senses little point in laboring the issue, their relationship is too new, too delicate, to force his views too firmly at this stage. But he files it away, keeps that someplace safe for a later date. He smiles warmly and tosses a takeout menu into Patrick’s lap. “Pick something, I’m starving.”

As they wait for their food to arrive — Pete will pay — he wonders if this counts as a date. If it does, this is number four. A late-night movie screening of some big-budget action thriller he didn’t really want to see and a walk along the pier in Santa Monica, sharing churros and feigning fear on the rollercoaster were two and three respectively. Pete has paid for everything so far, he has a thing for princesses and the drive to show he can provide for Patrick, that he can _rescue_ him, lingers in every ATM withdrawal.

They talk over pad thai, sharing easy conversation on trivial topics as their chopsticks rattle against cardboard cartons. Pete supposes this is the part he’s supposed to find enjoyable, hearing Patrick talk about his childhood dog and the things he did in high school. Instead, Pete is analyzing, weighing each syllable against the one that came before it to calculate if Patrick’s tone is changing, if he’s growing bored or restless. If Pete isn’t enough.

Instead, Patrick leans back into the couch cushions and watches the way twilight steals the gray from the city beyond the window and washes it yellow and gold. Pete’s always felt more at home in Los Angeles at night, he wonders if Patrick does too. “You okay?” he asks, as Patrick fidgets, shifts and runs his thumb along the waistband of his jeans. “Can I—”

“Shh.” Patrick cuts him off gently, thumbing open the button of his jeans. Pete’s heart flops; drops through an elevator shaft from the top floor down into the basement. Slowly, Patrick eases down his zipper and beckons Pete closer with his free hand. “Come here.”

He’s butterfly beautiful laid out on the couch; Pete would dearly love to keep it for himself, to pin his wings to heavyweight pages and ground him. This isn’t a pretty thing that Pete wants to share, this is his, his property, his Patrick-through-the-wall. He walks on his knees across the rug over hardwood and leans in close, sharing air that tastes of MSG, rosé and cologne. As Pete brings up a hand and touches the smooth-shaved warmth of his cheek, he wonders how many men Patrick actually _enjoys_ fucking.

There’s tight, rigid heat under Pete’s palm as he cups Patrick’s crotch through his jeans. That insistent kind of hardness, the promise of thickness, fullness, lush-tipped stickiness sliding slick down Pete’s throat and staining his lips, tongue, teeth. Patrick groans into Pete’s jaw, vibrating through his throat and down into his lungs, his heart, through the fucked mess of his groin and filling the tingling pulse of his own straining erection. Pete’s pulse shudders, an odometer bouncing desperately in the shivering chamber of his ribs.

“You’re fucking _perfect_ ,” he whispers, licking into the taste of Patrick’s mouth.

Patrick laughs, confident. “Say that again when I’ve fucked you. For now, I want you to blow me.”

Pete likes the destination but not the route, he shakes his head, grins and pulls the thick, pink length of Patrick’s cock from his pants. Like the rest of him, it’s beautiful; smooth and warm, veined velvet twitching against Pete’s palm as he raises an eyebrow, reminding Pete that he’s used to this, he won’t come undone and beg. Not yet, anyway. “Do you think about me sucking your dick?” Pete asks instead, his thumb sliding around the thick, dark crown of it. “When you’re with them? Does it help you get off?”

There’s a hitch in Patrick’s breathing, a shiver of uncertainty as he rubs his fingertips against the smooth, pale skin of his stomach. “My career isn’t available for discussion.”

“Your thoughts about me aren’t private,” Pete points out, mouthing at the base of his cock. He tastes as good as last time; clean and warm and fresh with lemongrass sweetness. He pulls off. “Intellectual property rights, if you’re thinking about me, I have a right to know.”

Of course, he has no intention of sharing _his_ thoughts about Patrick.

“Do I need to call Chris Pratt every time I get off thinking about him?” Patrick outlines the swollen flush of Pete’s lips with the sticky tip of his prick. “Hey, I once jerked off watching that Travis guy you have in your show. Please, pass on my apologies, would you? Tell him I couldn’t help it, he’s just so — so _big_ ,” and he bites his lip, strokes himself slowly, his thick, pink cock curving up out of his pants, obscene and delicious, “Does that go all the way down, do you know? God, I — _fuck_!”

Pete hits his gag reflex before he stops, choking, spluttering ugly coughs around the swollen heat of Patrick’s dick. The important thing isn’t that he does this perfectly, it’s that Patrick shuts his fucking mouth before Pete finds a way to shut it for him. Reckless hands rake through his hair, squeezing, pulling down to the roots as he finds a sloppy rhythm. He buries his jealousy in the way he sucks, vicious and possessive, the way he rubs his own hard cock against the couch. It’s angular, modern, no snug crevice to slide the fumbling hardness of it but he does what he can without dropping eye contact. Patrick will acknowledge who’s doing this to him.

“Nice,” Patrick pants, a man doing a broken impression of someone who’s in control. But Pete hears it; the breathy whine to it, the way his contracting throat forces half a beat of yearning past his lips. “How about we move this to the bedroom?”

In honesty, Pete will do this anywhere; Patrick can fuck him on the couch, against the refrigerator, over the hood of his car down in the parking garage. He’s caught in a vacuum created by the need of his own cock, absorbing breathable air and turning it stale, poisonous with the vicious need to possess Patrick entirely.

“You can fuck me,” he says breathlessly, tripping on desperation as Patrick stands, hauls him up and shoves him back into the bedroom. “Anything you want.”

There’s a difference between wanting and needing and Pete’s not sure which side Patrick is on. Of course, Patrick doesn’t have the advantage of a month spent speculating, listening, considering (or maybe he does, maybe Pete’s interest is echoed and Patrick spends his free time leaning into the wall, imagining the way Pete shapes under his comforter at night). Either way, this, he believes, is where he can tip the balance in his favor. He falls back onto the mattress, breath knocked from his lungs, panting short and burning around parted lips as Patrick shoulders out of his shirt.

So, Patrick is barefoot and bare-chested, dressed in nothing but painted on jeans and a sharp, knowing smirk. His cock is still thick, still hard, still dripping as he wrangles Pete, inelegant, out of his too-big t-shirt and too-loose sweatpants. Naked, Pete is splayed on the mattress with Patrick between his thighs. Patrick slides his palm, fingers spread, up from the curve of Pete’s ass, his hand molten and encompassing the sway of Pete’s erection as his smile curves dangerous, higher on one side. Pete whines — whines! — hates himself for the vulnerability of it, then decides that can wait as Patrick closes his hand and strokes. Pete comes undone for a moment, a shifting second when his guard drops, legs spread and back arched against his once-marital bed.

“Gorgeous,” Patrick says, hauling Pete by the hips, pulling him flush to the curve of his cock. He’s searing hot, burning straight through his jeans, through Pete’s skin, down into the gut-sharp nerves of his thighs, ass, balls. “You want me to fuck you? Hmm?”

There’s a world between what Pete wants to say and what he does say. What he _wants_ to do is hiss accusations, to ask Patrick if the men ever pay for Patrick to fuck them, if he wouldn’t prefer being ass up and pliant. But Pete smiles, touches a hand to Patrick’s wrist and whispers. “Please. I — it’s been a while. Take it slow, okay?”

“Like high school,” Patrick whispers softly, stealing any possible reply from Pete’s lips with the press of his fingers into Pete’s mouth. Pete sucks, eager, too much spit, nipping teeth at the tips. “Remember that? On the couch in your mom’s basement, biting whatever you could reach — the cushions, his hand, your wrist — so you wouldn’t cry out? Feeling so good, so _full_ , you ache with it. When your hands and your dick don’t know what to do but you figure it out, don’t you? Yeah, you figure it out. Did you fuck like that, Peter? Did you fuck other boys like me?”

He nods, stuttering staccato movement as Patrick pulls his fingers free and works his way out of his jeans. It’s elegant, polished, he doesn’t stagger against the mattress as he works his feet free and kneels, sweat-damp and glorious, between Pete’s thighs. Even their dicks look good together, dark and pale, thick and hard and ripe with blood and desperation. Every part of Pete is swollen, sticky, lush, low-hanging fruit desperate for the dig of Patrick’s fingertips into juice-full flesh.

Patrick finds the lube without asking where Pete keeps it, skimming through the night stand and fishing out the neat little pump bottle and a green-foil Trojan. See, Pete noticed Patrick’s racing colors that first night, lingered in the drug store by the sexual health shelf until he found the right ones. For a moment, Pete wonders if Patrick might pause, if he might fumble in his pocket and produce his own protection. That’s what whores are _supposed_ to do and Pete has a lecture about trust and understanding the difference between client and boyfriend already figured out. Patrick doesn’t say a word. He slicks his fingers, pushes Pete’s thighs apart, and rests against the bold and reckless tightness of Pete’s hole.

“That’s it,” he murmurs, hot palm sliding the length of Pete calf as he circles, circles, _circles_ and…

He pushes inside. A single finger sliding slippery into the desperate depths of Pete’s body. Pete cries out, convulses, grips the need for more, deeper, faster into the sheets at his hips and waits for Patrick to find the hot, white brilliance, the event horizon catastrophe, of his prostate. Oh, but Patrick is a devilish tease, taunting close like he can’t quite find it, the pad of his thumb catching the ridged stretch of Pete’s perineum. Pete won’t beg, he’s not a client, he’s not paying Patrick for the service of making him come. He’ll get there himself if he has to, fucking down onto a single, elegant finger with his hand around his cock.

“You want another?” Patrick asks, casually conversational, like they’re meeting in the aisles of Trader Joe’s over cantaloupe and zucchini. Pete groans, nods, pushes his hands up and under his pillow as Patrick opens him up, a conductor, a maestro, creating a symphony with the way Pete’s moans mingle with his thundering heartbeat.

He growls, furious with want, “Enough. Fuck me.”

He wants the burn of it, wants to feel like he’s teetering at the edge of falling apart, of being ripped down his seams as Patrick smooths down the rubber and lines up. He feels slick, cool lube over hot skin, foreign and unfamiliar as the tip of Patrick’s erection nudges to heat and tightness. Patrick lowers to him by degrees, the smooth press of his forehead, the touch of his mouth as he kisses slow, sweet, tender and, carefully, he pushes inside.

Pete fights the urge to push back, the feeling too strange, too sharp, every nerve screaming bright with heat and rerouting, rewiring, shooting fizz-tingle shockwaves from his groin to the base of his skull. Pete sees stars, tastes them, carbon and copper on the tip of his tongue as Patrick pushes, presses, consumes every bare inch of Pete’s body, his mind, and replaces it with pressure and fucked-hard fullness.

There are fingers twisted, twined around him, one hand fisted into his hair, the other around his cock as Patrick draws breath, closes his eyes and, dewed brilliant with sweat, begins to move. Slowly. So slowly. The first thrust is torture, withdraw and impale as he pulls Pete apart. He’s good. Fuck, but he’s so fucking _good_. Pete kisses him with intent to bruise, to stain his mouth with blood and the tingling imprint of Pete’s lips. He wants the next man he sees, the next client, to know the shape of Pete’s body against him, to smell, see, taste him. To suck Patrick’s cock and know where it’s been.

He shudders at that, clenches, the smooth, dark walls of him closing around Patrick. Above him, Patrick shivers, rolls his hips as he thrusts and, on each smooth, deep stroke into him, he finds that spot. It builds, the faintest tingle at the back of Pete’s tongue, the way his toes curl against the covers and his mouth floods wet and messy. Patrick thrusts deeper, harder, the soft-swollen head of him staging an assault on Pete’s orgasm, dragging, urging, roughly demanding as he grinds to the silk-hot completion of it, that desperate thrum of need buried deep inside.

Patrick pulls out. Empty, aching sore, Pete stares at him and waits for an explanation.

“Roll over,” Patrick groans, hands on Pete’s hips. His nails are sharper than they seem, carving ten thin, red hollows into the copper-gold skin. Pete wonders if he’ll bleed out from them or go blind from the physical weight of his lust-thick cock first. Before he can speculate, Patrick turns him around, eases him back, lowering Pete down over his knees, pulling him down onto his cock and pushing the smooth planes of his chest to the sharp-supple length of Pete’s back. He slides in easily this time, Pete is stretched-smooth and accommodating, slick-slippery with lube, as he slides down onto the thick, raw length of Patrick’s prick.

“Fuck yeah,” Patrick pants into his throat, holding Pete steady as he fucks up into him. “God, you feel _so_ — _so_ fucking _good_.”

The pressure is low in his belly, the heat of Patrick around him, behind him, shoved deep and merciless inside of him. Pete groans, impatiently craving the blood-hot perfection of finality as Patrick fucks him, ruts him, turns him inside out. The bedsprings match his pulse, creaking operatically beneath them as Patrick hisses filth into his ear.

_I can’t believe this idiot is fucking me_ , Pete thinks, and then promptly comes, arcing thick and white across his stomach, dripping hot against his own thighs. The world around them is a hum of static, caught in the cataclysm of it. Open-mouthed and hungry, Patrick fucks him harder, faster, drives the final throbbing ache of it from the tip of Pete’s fucked-raw cock with a cry. Spine straight, he squeezes his fist around the length of Pete’s shiver-sensitive dick and then he slumps, spent, mouthing breathless groans into the hot, wet skin of Pete’s throat

They stay like that, on their knees and wound together, an impossible beat of syncopated hearts. Pete wonders if he can remain like this, if nothing can change until they die, rot, conjoined skeletons for future generations to find and speculate their story.

Maybe someone will write a screenplay about them.

“Stay over,” he whispers as Patrick slips his softening cock free. The emptiness is troubling, Pete is craving something more.

If Patrick stays, if he spends the night in Pete’s bed, then it’s barely a stretch of the imagination to invite him to stay for breakfast. After that, dinner sort of makes sense and then it’s inevitability, the familiarity of stopping over, of leaving clothes, razor, toothbrush. This is what Pete always does, his game is smooth, polished and practiced.

Against the sheets, pale and porcelain-perfect, Patrick smiles. “I’d love to.”

*

Pete has been staring at the bedroom wall for over an hour. He has a half-formed plan, the ghost of an idea lingering somewhere in his darker places. There’s a screwdriver in his hand, twisting between his palms to the rhythm of the headboard that rocked in Patrick’s apartment an hour earlier, the sound that taunts him, that proves time and again that Patrick’s isn’t doing this _right_.

He’s poured his fury into his MacBook, every vicious, bitter thought burning bile at the back of his tongue committed to the page and waiting for retribution delivered in a movie theater months from now. Once Patrick sees it, he’ll understand, he’ll know that Pete is doing all of this for them. For now, though, he needs relief.

It would be easy enough, he thinks, to scrape a hole through the drywall, to continue that through to the other side and open the forbidden realm of Patrick’s apartment to his consideration. Patrick has to know he can hear him, that every moan, groan and desperate plea rings through his ears like the kickback of gunfire. Pete is constructed of base desires, just like those men in their Mercedes and Jaguars and goddamn _Bentleys_. He suspects those desires can be sated, his thirst for it slaked, if he can watch. He wants to see the way Patrick’s face contorts for them, the way he bites his lip. There is a language — _their_ language — that Pete understands. He’s… curious. To see if Patrick speaks it with other people. With _unworthy_ people.

A few inches of drywall. He can scrape through in a few minutes, he’s sure of it. Somewhere close to the headboard, somewhere Patrick won’t notice. He has those Ikea prints on the wall, easy enough to reposition one, to block the way the light will stream through and give him away. A couple minutes, a swirl of dust motes on circulated air and Pete obtains relief and lends Patrick safety in observation. After all, it’s only a matter of time until Patrick meets a monster.

He drives the head of the screwdriver into the thick flesh of his palm, feels it burn and ache with the threat of broken skin. His lip is caught between his teeth as he stands, as he approaches the wall and smooths his hand across it. There’s a smudge of blood left against the paintwork, turns out he broke the skin after all. He digs the tip of the screwdriver into the wall, watches the way the paint curls up against the invasion, the scar he leaves behind on the unmarred surface of it.

Just a couple of sheets of drywall.

He lowers his hand, lets the screwdriver fall, rattle against the hardwood. 8a, their bedroom directly beneath his, will be unimpressed. He doesn’t care.

One day, Patrick will meet a monster. Some twisted fuck who wants to hurt him, to destroy him, to tear him limb from limb and leave him bloodied and bruised. Pete needs to do _something_ to prevent that. He kicks at the screwdriver in wordless irritation.

This isn’t the way Pete is going to save him.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and kudos are always awesome, or stop by on tumblr @sn1tchesandtalkers and say hi :D


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's cold, it's grey, it's getting dark sooner. Time to curl up with some Creepete and a hot drink! I remind you that no Patricks were harmed in the making of this fic.

It’s been two months since they started dating; Pete’s not sure this is progressing fast enough.

(Ashlee moved in after six whirlwind weeks. Married him four months later. An overnight bag that became a suitcase that became a U-Haul, her ridiculous little dog pissing all over his collection of rare sneakers and his checking account peppered with joint grocery store bills and payments to her hairdresser. He remembers liking that time, when she wanted to impress him. The rare beat between getting to know you sex and get the fuck out of my house fighting. Back before she tried to pretend she had a life outside of Pete’s orbit.)

Unofficially, there are testaments to Patrick’s existence scattered throughout apartment 12a; a half-read David Foster Wallace novel on the coffee table, a couple of records propped by Pete’s turntable, the evidence of an expensive wine habit left in half-bottle carafes in Pete’s refrigerator. Of course, the book is pretentious, vainglorious _bullshit_ dressed up in big words; the vinyl is vintage, original pressings that Patrick insists play better than high quality, digital remasters; the wine tastes like piss but costs a couple hundred bucks a throw. So, it’s not like Patrick isn’t _present_ , as such. But everything is transient, nothing that can’t be cleared away in three minutes and a single packing box. He’ll feel a lot better once he’s got this into the open.

“So,” he begins carefully; Patrick raises an eyebrow but doesn’t look up. “Things are going — _well_ , don’t you think?” Patrick makes a huffed, non-committal sound, the sound of someone trying to ignore Pete’s speculation. Irritated, Pete presses his fingertip into Patrick’s cheek and jiggles. “Hey, I said, I think things are going well. With us. Did you hear me?”

Patrick rolls his eyes and pulls off Pete’s cock, the rude, red length of it thick and wet with spit between them as he pushes to his elbows and snaps, annoyed, “Right now? You had to ask me this _right now_?”

It’s obvious – to Pete at least, even if Patrick lacks the insight – that this is the sort of thing that should be discussed when the moment arises. Pete’s read that sex brings a couple closer together, there’s literally never going to be a better time to discuss this. He taps the tip of his cock against the pouting flush of Patrick’s lower lip just for the way it springs lush against his skin. The smile scarring the corners of his lips is wide, every tooth on show as he pushes his fingers through the sweaty tangle of Patrick’s hair. They’re Sunday morning lazy, stretched out on the pale gray cotton of Pete’s bed sheets, newspapers and breakfast courtesy of kitchen 24 abandoned on the nightstand.

“Well?” he prompts, as Patrick attempts to duck back down, to suck at the head of his cock. His dick twitches an objection as he holds him back by the hair, as he tilts his face up so their eyes meet. Patrick has such pretty eyes. “It’s been, what? A couple months?” Pete has learnt to feign casual disinterest in the details, even when he knows them explicitly. “Do you think this is going somewhere?”

With a sigh, Patrick shifts. He crawls up, biting kisses to Pete’s hips, across his stomach and chest, butterfly breaths against his throat until he’s sat between Pete’s legs, those thick, pale thighs hooked over Pete’s. He cups Pete’s face in his hands, smooths his thumbs along the crest of Pete’s cheekbones and taps a kiss to the tip of his nose.

“I think we’re having fun together,” Patrick says carefully. “You’re having fun, right?”

The problem with being the smartest person in the room at any given moment is that it’s so desperately _dull_ watching people attempt to hide their emotions behind platitudes. Pete is being given the brush off; gentle, caring, but blown off nonetheless. There’s a hard spike of dislike in his gut that he hides behind a smile – one of those big, bright, _natural_ ones he practices in the mirror – and a touch of his hand to Patrick’s cheek. “ _Totally_. But, like, you see this working out, right? I mean, we’re not just treading water here? Look, I’m not, you know, a psycho or anything, but I like you.”

Close up camera two; this is the part where the hero looks sincere, lets his gaze filter up from under his lashes. This is where the romantic interest takes the hero’s hand, leans in close and whispers that of course he feels it too.

Resolutely insisting on going off script, Patrick chews his lip and stares determinedly over Pete’s shoulder. “I mean, it’s only been a few weeks, I – isn’t this enough for now?” Pete is only aware that his fingernails are breaking skin when Patrick yelps and shifts back. “Seriously! No marks, okay? It’s not exactly great for business if I look like I’ve been fucked by every trucker from Concord to San Diego.”

 _Business_.

“Sorry.” (He’s not sorry, but he _is_ good at faking it. It leaves a sour taste at the back of Pete’s tongue, bitter with fury as he leans in, holds Patrick steady and bites a kiss to the corner of his mouth.) “I forgot.” (He didn’t; he glows with the thrill of it every time he manages to leave a mark behind; the press of his fingernails, the bruise of his mouth, the swollen, tender flush he can leave on Patrick’s lips with the thick heat of his cock.) “But I hate that you care what they think of you. Like you’re their property or something.”

“It’s my job.”

“So that means I have to _like_ it?” Pete surges forward, tips Patrick back against the mattress and follows him. What he likes about Patrick, he decides, is that he never knows which incarnation he’s going to get. Will it be the innocent, wide-eyed pretty boy who eyes Pete’s cock like he doesn’t think he’ll be able to take it? Or the bitchy loudmouth who tells Pete he’s doing everything wrong? This morning, as Patrick sighs beneath him and kisses him sweet and tender, it seems he’s got the lover. He likes this one; this one is a definite favorite. Convinced that this is as good a time as any, he makes his pitch. “Listen, I’ve been thinking…”

“Uh oh,” Patrick laughs, fingertips shaping the long planes of muscle that stretch the length of Pete’s spine.

“Shut up, seriously,” Pete breathes in the smell of him, the scent of expensive cologne, body wash, shaving soap, “I think you should let me take care of you.”

Pete has done his research in form of illegally downloaded movies centered largely around prostitution, consumed through his headphones when everything is silent in Patrick’s apartment. He watches them instead of working, in between snatched soundbites scrawled into his screenplay. Pete hasn’t written a Lake-Effect script in _weeks_. There are unanswered voicemails mounting on his cell phone, red-button phone calls dropped like they’ll believe he has no signal. Pete works only on his screenplay, devoting hours to how it hangs together, to ironing out dialogue and directions so that no director can misinterpret his ballad. But Patrick doesn’t know that. He waits, impatient, for Patrick to do the right thing and express a little gratitude.

Instead, Patrick kisses him, sweet and slow. His lips work from Pete’s mouth to his jaw to the salt-velvet tag of his earlobe where he whispers, breathy-soft, “I don’t _need_ a big, strong man to ride to my tower and rescue me.”

The tip of Pete’s tongue burns with the accusation that he hasn’t actually been invited to Patrick’s _tower_ since the night he was mistaken for a client. It leaves him sick with fury that those men — those other _pitiful_ men — are granted the liberty of seeing the shape of Patrick’s life whilst Pete — his _boyfriend_ — is kept at arm’s length. He keeps smiling, shaping the edges of it like clay until it feels right in the impossible anger charring him black from the inside.

“I know,” he murmurs, soft and soothing, nipping along Patrick’s collar bone. He grinds down, rubs the full, hard weight of his cock against Patrick’s and feels him arch up, opening himself. “But think about it; I do alright, you know? I can take care of us, both of us. You could quit work, find another job, a _real_ one.”

“I _like_ my job.” Patrick rolls them over, straddles Pete’s hips and conjures lube and a condom from the nightstand like a high-end magician. A slick of lube, cool and smooth, drips over the head of Pete’s cock, then the condom; Pete lies back, cock hard and aching and watches Patrick’s performance. “I make six figures a year, I have an investment portfolio that makes me more declarable income than most people make from their jobs. How do you propose I keep that up without my main source of income?”

“I _propose_ you move in with me,” Pete says softly, rubbing the pad of his thumb against the swollen tenderness of Patrick’s balls. He looks up, smiles, holds it in place even as Patrick frowns.

“You barely know me,” he counters, braced on his knees over the lust-thick fury of Pete’s cock. It twitches in the frame of Patrick’s thighs, bouncing, heat-seeking and desperate. Patrick has no fucking idea what he’s talking about. Pete _knows_ him, knows everything about him from the TV shows he likes to the weekly Tuesday phone calls to his mom to the way he moans when a stranger fucks him from behind. “There’s — that’s insane.”

“I know I’m into you,” Pete offers, drawing him down before he can ruin this any further. The thick, rigid cap of his cock barely breaches the soft-swollen tightness of Patrick’s hole. Above him, Patrick throws back his head, exposes the long, elegant line of his throat and the delicate throb of his carotid artery. Pete eases him down a little further, feels the first tightglorious inch of him, then another, then another. He pauses, Patrick halfway-impaled on the length of his dick as he rises onto his elbows and licks endemic heat into the rose-bloom pinch of Patrick’s nipples. Soft against smooth skin, he murmurs, “I know we’re good together. Why wait?”

Patrick takes the last of Pete’s cock for himself, sinks down slowly and begins to move, rolling his hips like the pull-release of low tide. Pete moans into his mouth, tangles his fingers in the coppery fall of Patrick’s hair and holds him close.

“You need to slow down,” Patrick informs him, demonstrating with the speed of his thrusts. There’s something truly pornographic about the way he bites his lip, dirtier than the way his body shapes, hot, tight, smooth, around the ache-stiff length of Pete’s dick. “You need—”

Pete steals further objection with the taste of his tongue against Patrick’s mouth. He holds him steady, both hands on his ass, pries him open and ruts up into him, deep enough to convince himself he can feel Patrick’s pulse through the wound-raw tip of his cock. Above him, balanced on his knees and tugging frantic at the blood-dark strain of his own prick, Patrick whimpers. His balls feel heavy, tight and drawn, against the tattoo etched indelible between Pete’s hip bones.

“You’re fucking gorgeous,” Pete tells him. This he can say with sincerity, addressed to the delicate way Patrick’s collar bone stands against his endless paleness, the arch of his cheekbones, the lush pink rawness of his bitten-sore lower lip. Funny, Pete thinks, that these things are nothing more than an attractively arranged selection of muscles and sinew stretched over bones.

Patrick smiles, squeezes tight around the steel tightness of Pete between his ass cheeks. “I know.”

They don’t speak again, not until Patrick shudders above him, until he streaks the gym-hard gold of Pete’s chest with bittersalt luster. Pete shoves him back, sucks the taste from the tip of Patrick’s cock as he slumps against the mattress. On his knees, he tugs away the condom and, whilst Patrick’s sucks desperate, improbable heat into the stiff, dark points of Pete’s nipples, he strokes himself off until he comes — thick, sudden, sharp — against the waxed-smooth silk of Patrick’s stomach.

There’s no point in fucking a whore if he doesn’t get to treat him like one.

The need gives way to stuttered breathing, lungs raking sore at the dust motes tossed up from the mattress, dancing through the streak of sunlight bursting golden through the blinds. Patrick kisses Pete’s shoulder, soft and wet and open-mouthed, the threat of teeth at the edges; Pete smooths his hand through Patrick’s hair and tries again, lust-drunk. “Move in with me.”

Patrick shakes his head and smiles. “You’re insane. Cute. But insane.”

“So, that’s a no?” The hole-in-the-wall seems viable now, a chance to assess the Patrick he doesn’t get to see. He needs to get into that apartment, that’s the key to getting into Patrick’s head.

“Oh, absolutely,” Patrick assures him casually, hands tucked behind his head. His underarm hair is waxed away too, the hollow there smooth and damp. Pete licks into it, tastes the salt-sweet of Patrick’s sweat and wonders about the complexity of pheromones.

“I’ll keep asking,” Pete promises. The dopamine is kicking in, he feels sleepy-soft and blurred through his center.

Patrick laughs. “Maybe one day I’ll say yes.”

*

Despite Pete’s insomniac scheming, the opportunity to get into 12b once more presents itself in the mundane facets of everyday life, rather than the convoluted and laborious schemes considered over middle-of-the-night slasher movie marathons.

Patrick is eating yoghurt mixed into granola, leafing through the LA Times, Pete is faking like he’s marking up a script, scraping the tip of a fluorescent marker across the page every couple seconds. This particular script is two seasons out of date. The episode has been filmed, aired and attracted a flurry of FCC complaints. Pete supposes this is what novelists mean when they refer to silence as _companionable_. He drags the nib of his marker a little harder over the paper for the way it swishes, the way it carves through the endless, echoing absence of conversation.

“So, everything okay?” Pete asks, his voice slicing through the silence with a conversation starter he doesn’t really give much of a shit about. Still, everyone likes to think someone is interested in them.

“Define _okay_ ,” Patrick says slowly, takes a sip of coffee and then taps his fingertip against his newspaper. “Did you know the mayor has mishandled six point three _million_ dollars in campaign funds and got caught fucking, like, _four_ different call girls?”

“ _You’re_ going to get all high and mighty about call girls?”  

“Not at all,” Patrick shrugs laconically and licks his thumb, turns the page carefully, “Everyone’s just trying to scrape a living, you know? I’m just saying, you get the level of service you pay for. Speaking of, I really need to talk to the super about getting cameras down in the parking garage, I’m paying three grand a month to live here, this isn’t the sort of bullshit I should have to deal with.”

Pete resolves to damage a few other cars. It wouldn’t do to make it seem obvious. He’ll keep the numerals for Patrick’s guests, though, let them figure it out.

“Have you thought maybe it’s a client?” Pete suggests, super casual, thumbing through his phone without looking up. Patrick’s raised eyebrow is palpable; is this guy seriously oblivious enough to imagine that johns don’t get clingy sometimes? “I mean, you’re cute, you know? You’re nice to them _and_ you suck their dicks. Maybe someone got attached.”

“I—” Patrick pauses and glances out of the window, likes he’s imagining he’ll see one of his clients out there right now, dressed in Pete’s Halloween costume. “Do you honestly think someone would _do_ that?”

“Why don’t you go to the police?”

It’s an entirely empty query, the very last thing Pete wants is a bored detective dusting for prints, suspecting the boyfriend. Still, he knows what the answer will be, he needs Patrick to say it out loud, to let the reality of it sink through his bones via his vocal cords. Across the counter, Patrick swallows heavily.

“Why do you think?”

The silence that falls is anxious — Pete revels in it, flexing his shoulders and looking up with a smile, “I’m right through the wall, babe. You know you’re safe with me around.”

Patrick pushes away his breakfast. “Hey, uh, speaking of? I have, like, an appointment tomorrow,” the way he emphasises _appointment_ suggests an outcall, summoned to a hotel some place downtown to fuck a visiting stranger, a businessman most likely, on impersonal sheets in strange surroundings, “but the super was gonna swing by at about two. I don’t — I mean, say no if it’s not convenient, but — could you maybe wait in my apartment and let him in?”

The strength of will required not to snap his head up is measurable on the Fujita scale. Slow, casually, Pete glances up from his phone with a shrug. “Sure, I guess. What’s he checking?”

“Okay,” Patrick bites his lip, furrows his brow, “this is going to sound kind of, I dunno, gross? But, I think there might be mice. In my bedroom wall. It gets so bad sometimes, I swear I — have you heard them?” he implores, Pete’s pulse picks up; thick, glorious and rich with triumph. “Just like — scuffling?”

“You’re going crazy, babe,” Pete rolls his eyes fondly. Patrick shrugs doubtfully. A man who doesn’t trust his own mind has no choice but to allow those close to him to reassure him of reality. “I never hear a thing.”

*

“Yeah,” Pete nods in the direction of the bedroom, like the superintendent needs a map to find his way around one of forty-eight identical units stacked on top of one another. Little boxes made of ticky-tacky. “He says he can hear something in the wall but, like, I have the unit out back and I don’t hear anything.”

The guy — Eddie, according to his name badge — wears an expression that suggests this is the most exciting thing to happen to him since the great toilet clog of ‘96. He strokes his moustache, a magnificent specimen that somehow manages to be both too thick and too thin in all of the least aesthetic places, and adjusts the tool belt around his paunch. It’s not that Pete’s ever really thought about how a stereotypical apartment maintenance tech might look, but he’s pretty sure Eddie ticks every single box.

“You noticed any mouse shit?” he asks conversationally, scraping heavy work boots across Patrick’s hardwood, standing back to assess the bedroom wall like it might have all the answers. Pete is immensely glad he thought better of making that peephole. “Any piss or, I dunno, they chewed anything?”

Against the couch, Pete shrugs. There’s an indent of his body pressed into the leather, somewhere Patrick might sit later and leaf through one of those pretentious coffee table books he has on art and photography and music of the mid twentieth century. “No idea, man.”

In the bedroom, Eddie smears himself against the wall. He seems like he might leave it greasy-slick and sticky. He clicks his tongue, attempting to summon non-existent vermin like a particularly lack-luster Pied Piper. His brows draw low, a hand held up to silence an already silent Pete. Fuck, Pete hates the service industry and everyone employed within it.

“I can’t hear anything,” he says eventually, but slowly, like he’s trying to figure out the missing piece of a two piece puzzle. “You want to take a listen? Maybe you can coax ’em out?”

“Do I look like the fucking mouse whisperer?”

“Hey,” Eddie straightens up, demonstrates he possesses a solid six inches on Pete and a good sixty pounds. He taps his badge. “You show a little respect, yeah? What does this say to you?”

It _says_ ‘Eddie - Hollywood Tower Maintenance’ but Pete suspects he’s supposed to think outside of the box. “No high school diploma and a domineering wife?” he guesses idly.

The way Eddie scowls suggests Pete is right on at least one of those points.

“You know what?” Eddie approaches; Pete suspects if he weren’t wearing the name of his employer all over his shirt like a billboard, he may take a fist to the stomach.

He grins, taunting. “No idea.”

“Fuck you,” Eddie is cramming his flashlight back into his belt, furious, humiliated, exactly the way Pete wants him to be, “I don’t need to stand around and take this from some fucking faggot,” Pete clutches his heart, feigning unimaginable hurt, “tell your _boyfriend_ to figure it out for himself and call Zenith. Oh, and you tell him, he gets one more noise violation and he’s out on his ass. Maybe fuck him a little more quietly.”

And now it’s Pete’s turn to fire with fury because, he knows, those noise violations from 12b have nothing to do with _him_ and everything to do with faceless, nameless specters who touch what isn’t theirs. He slams the door on Eddie’s heels and takes a moment to look around the apartment. He wants to slam holes in every condom in Patrick’s nightstand, to tear the art from the walls and leave the apartment wrecked and ruined. He breathes hard through his nose and counts cars on the freeway until his heart rate slows. Patrick said he’d be back by three-thirty. Pete needs to work fast.

First, the package dropped into his mailbox by the wonderful folks at Amazon. Prime is a worthy monthly investment for access to Lucifer and American Gods; next day delivery is just a bonus.

On Patrick’s coffee table, he tips them from the logoed box. They scatter across the glass, ten of them, each one no bigger than the nail on Pete’s little finger. High definition, WiFi enabled, motion sensitive with _sound_ ; Pete had, honestly, no idea that surveillance cameras could be quite so small, quite so _discreet._

He installs them quickly, five around the bedroom, three in the living room, one in the bathroom and one in the hallway. They link to his phone quickly, portable evidence recorded in real time.

Google says it takes eight minutes to walk from the apartment building to the nearest KeyMe kiosk in a 7/Eleven down on Cahuenga. It turns out it’s more like six when Pete really goes for it, devouring the sidewalk with purpose as he ducks past the Capitol Records building and notes another construction lot scarring the skyline up ahead.

The store is deserted. Casually, Pete picks up a quarter of vodka and a pack of chips then stands at the kiosk and, carefully, feeds in the key Patrick handed to him on his way out of the door. These things are amazing, Pete decides, when the machine asks for his fingerprint and assures him it can reproduce a copy of the key anytime, should he need it. A penny change from three bucks and he has guaranteed access to apartment 12b for as long as the 7/Eleven is open. The future is now and it’s fucking incredible.

“Have a nice day,” the cashier calls to his back.

He shoves the little brass key down into his pants pocket and smiles. “Oh, I already am.”

The glitter shine is rubbed from the surface of his bonhomie as he approaches the underpass of the 101, the traffic roaring endless over his head and his phone vibrating down in his pocket. He hauls it out, anticipating Patrick but finding Gabe. Against all better judgement, he thumbs the green button and raises the handset to his ear. “What?”

“Don’t fucking _what_ me, asshole,” Gabe snaps. It seems he’s the bad cop to Gerard’s good cop, Pete wonders which role this leaves for Andy. “Where the fuck have you been? I’ve been half a second away from calling the cops to do a goddamn wellness check.”

“Here I am,” Pete extends his free arm, even though Gabe can’t see him. He’s not above throwing a temper tantrum right here in the Franklin Avenue gridlock. “Panic over! What the fuck do you want?”

“Oh, hey, so do you remember that fucking _job_ you have? You know the one, you show up at the office and type up the funnies into the special computer box? We give the funnies to the people who pretend to be someone else and then an exec in an office downtown writes us a fucking _paycheck_ and then we pay our mortgages and, you know, _eat_? You remember that? Work?”

Pete’s pretty sure he’s not paid to deal with this shit and expresses as much, “Is this part of my job description now? Take bullshit from you when I’m trying to work? Oh, I’m sorry, I must’ve missed that clause in the fucking contract I won us last time that says I’m not allowed to work from home.”

“Are you?” Gabe prompts aggressively. “Working from home? Because you haven’t turned in a script in close to a month and a half. We start filming in _two months_ , Pete. This is the last contracted season and we’ve got enough FCC complaints to mean we need to watch our asses—”

“That’s what we _do_ , asshole!” Pete shouts into the handset, pulling it in front of his face like his ire can be transmitted without FaceTime, like he can throw the palpable weight of his fury across soundwaves and phone lines. “We generate complaints! That’s why everyone watches us!”

“So give me something to generate a complaint!” If they were in the office right now — the bright space filled with action figures, ergonomic bean bag chairs and vending machines that spit out candy rather than coffee — they’d no doubt be trading punches by now. “What the fuck is wrong with you, you fucking psycho? You pick that guy up in the bar and then you go M-I-fucking-A? I’m starting to think you’ve got him buried under the fucking floorboards, mamahuevo!” Pete doesn’t speak Spanish, but he suspects that wasn’t complimentary.

“Go fuck yourself,” it irritates him immensely that his reply lacks insight, witticism or any below-the-belt personalism that might linger, sore and stinging, hours after the conversation ends.

“Be in the office tomorrow,” Gabe says, more threat than invitation. “Or I swear to God, we’re gonna have to rethink this whole thing without you.”

Before Pete can conjure something cutting, the line goes dead, Gabe’s fury lost to the roar of traffic that’s always caught in rush hour. Pete considers tossing his phone under the wheels of the nearest car, thinks better of it and sinks it down into his back pocket. He has ten minutes until Patrick gets back, he needs to hurry up.

Twenty minutes later he’s laid on the couch, hand behind his head and one tucked down the front of his pants as he watches South Park. He hates this show, but fakes like he’s engrossed as Patrick drops his messenger bag and kicks off his shoes.

“Hey,” he greets him, breathless and flushed, “I’ve had a shitty day, wanna let me blow you in the shower and make it a little better?”

“Aww, honey. Office politics getting you down?”

Pete holds his breath as they trip to the bathroom, shedding clothes like old skin until they’re bare and burning, doused in shower spray and slick-mouth fire. On the countertop, his phone glows, a notification informing him that camera six is live. It stares down at them, impassive, barely noticeable against the cornicing. Patrick sinks to his knees and licks impossible heat along the nerve-bright length of Pete’s aching cock. Pete’s world narrows to sensation sparking along his spine, to slick velvet suction around his cock and fingers at the tight breach of his hole.

The camera records it all, Pete’s evidence of carnal devotion downloading via his phone to his hard drive. Patrick, it seems, doesn’t suspect a thing.

*

Pete was a chemical plant in his teens. An unending rattle of pills and talking therapy, antipsychotics that didn’t work because he _isn’t_ psychotic. Observing Patrick, knowing that Patrick remains blissfully unaware that he is observed, feels a little like shedding that skin. Pete has never fully understood his purpose, his place in the cosmic balance of things; he is above the common man but has no outlet for his superiority. Watching the way his laptop screen stutters into life as a new notification of movement in the apartment beyond the wall feeds through the Wi-Fi, he thinks he may have discovered that purpose.

Between trips to the gym on the ground floor and runs to the grocery store, Pete conducts his life around Patrick’s schedule. He knows the minutiae, he watches it, Patrick on the couch with Ray watching American Horror Story. Ray wants to touch him, Pete can tell, he’s just too much of a pussy to reach out a hand and brush it through the coppery hair at the nape of Patrick’s neck. Of course, if he _did_ , Pete would have to break every one of his fingers. He watches Patrick shower, watches him eat cereal from the box while he watches the news.

He watches him fuck his clients.

They’re not faceless now and they’re absolutely not without names. Pete recognizes them; a senator, a district attorney, a couple of prominent city officials, some higher up in the Los Angeles Police Department with the kind of recognizable face that appears in photo-friendly soundbites after local crime tragedies. Patrick has an influential consumer base — prominent men, _powerful_ men, the kind of men who absolutely would not want the world to know their taste for pretty little lush-lipped twinks with eager mouths and peach-soft asses.

They leave with whispered promises, with piles of cash left on the nightstand and that thrilling promise: ‘ _threw in a little extra allowance money for you, sweetie_ ’. Patrick is many things by these men; infantilized, patronized, colonized for the way they can come down his throat or deep into the slick, tight depths of his body. He’s also coddled, overpaid, pampered and rewarded. And now, Pete understands Patrick’s reticence, sees the filthy way Patrick has exchanged sensibility and self-respect for a stack of bills and a clutch of fancy gifts.

(Pete is almost certain a client was responsible for that sleek little BMW down in the parking garage. He considers scratching it up to prove a point, to give whichever asshole it was something else to pay for when Patrick pouts prettily about the unfairness of it.)

So, Pete makes notes of names and employers. He records dates and times and takes screenshots of the comings and goings in the hallway, of the come and heat in the bedroom. Sometimes, he touches himself while he watches, not because he gets off on watching Patrick take a stranger’s cock, but because Patrick _doesn’t know_ he’s watching. He comes silently, biting into the flesh of his palm or the sharp angles under warm skin of his wrist. Beyond the wall, Patrick’s head bobs or his ass shifts and Pete imagines he can feel it, even if he doesn’t know what _it_ is.

Occasionally, when Patrick goes out on an outcall or wanders the aisles of Whole Foods, Pete slips to apartment block B. On quiet feet, he hurries to 12b, slides open the door and slips inside. Once there, he makes minor changes, shifts a lamp, adjusts the comforter, leaves behind the unsettled atmosphere of air that shouldn’t have been disturbed. Nothing is obvious, nothing too blatant, but slowly, slowly, _slowly_ , Patrick seems to become aware of it.

He brings it up one night as they lie on the couch in Pete’s apartment, caught somewhere between making out and watching American Idol. Patrick pulls back, bites his lip and rolls to his side. “I — hey, if I tell you something, do you promise to tell me if you think I’m going crazy?”

Pete, an expert on incorrect accusations of craziness, raises his eyebrows. “Sure.”

“Okay, so, you remember you said that maybe a client was getting a little — clingy?” Patrick pauses, Pete nods. “Well, right, this is where it starts to sound insane, I — I think someone is going into my apartment when I’m not there.”

“You’re right,” Pete laughs, he’s rehearsed this part time and again, he knows his script, “that _does_ sound insane. How would someone _do_ that?”

“I’m not sure,” Patrick shrugs and presses a little closer to Pete’s chest, accepting the way Pete soothes a hand along his spine, the way he presses his fingers down under the waistband of Patrick’s jeans. “But, like, let’s say I was working with the kind of guys who _could_ get access to my apartment. I — don’t you think that’s weird? It’s just, you know, dumb little things. I thought maybe someone had gone through my underwear drawer a couple days ago and the time before _that_ it sort of looked like someone messed up the bed but — you don’t believe me?”

Pete shuffles up onto his elbows a little, cocks his head and paints himself dark with a frown of deep, sincere consideration. He is a wonderful portrait of contemplation as he celebrates the success of his master plan, his lip caught between his teeth thoughtfully.

“You — do _you_ think someone would do that?” he asks slowly, like he can’t imagine the fairy tale monster lurking in the shadows capable of that level of depravity. Really, Patrick should consider himself lucky; imagine if someone _genuinely_ dangerous had the same idea. It’s only a matter of time. “You don’t think that sounds a little far-fetched?”

Pete wants Patrick to believe it. The best way to make that happen is to cast doubt on the validity of his fear.

“You think I’m crazy,” Patrick says, his voice tangled in his throat. Pete keeps his expression soft with a mask of concern, if Patrick wants to interpret that as fear for his safety or for his mental stability, well, that’s not Pete’s call. “You think I’m being dumb.”

“I don’t think you’re being dumb. I think you’re stressed out and tired and that’s making you paranoid. Dealing with these men and their… _issues_ , can’t be easy.”

“It makes sense when it happens,” Patrick mutters, flushing up with fury as his fists clench. “But then I say it out loud and — and I just sound fucking stupid. A couple of out of place throw pillows and a drawer I probably left open myself. I sound insane.”

“Hey, hey, shh,” Pete soothes, contrite and coaxing, as though Patrick is a particularly nervous animal. “I believe you. Look, feel free to say no, I’m not putting any pressure on you _at all_ but, you know, why don’t you stay here for a few days? Maybe you’ll feel a little safer?”

The glance Patrick casts around the room is glorious, the fear of shadows gathering in the corners, the blood-bright panic. That’s all Pete’s, he owns every twitch at the corner of Patrick’s lips, every nightmare creeping insidious from under his bed, his boogie monsters crawling from the closet. And all Pete had to do was shift around a lamp and mess up some boxer briefs. The power crawls the length of his spine, shudders down into his fingertips and has him drawing Patrick close for a kiss that tastes of Chinese take out and carefully constructed anxiety.

“You don’t mind?” he asks against Pete’s lips, the curve of them lush and damp. Pete nips into the thickness of the lower one with his teeth, rolls his hips and brings the stirring throb of his erection to the seam of Patrick’s sweats.

He shakes his head. “Whatever makes you feel safe.”

“Thanks. I — I really owe you. You’re the best.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, I adore hearing what you think. Comments and kudos are always awesome or you can come say hi on tumblr @sn1tchesandtalkers.
> 
> See you next week - same Creepete time, same Creepete place, same Creepete channel.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Tuesday everyone! I hope everyone's having a great week so far. This week's chapter is a little shorter but I think it fits the narrative pretty well. It's also the penultimate chapter so hopefully I'll see you guys back here for the dramatic conclusion next week!

Of course, it escalates.

The escalation itself isn’t a surprise for Pete; this is how it works. He loves too completely, feels things far too deeply. He has this whole thing figured out and stored in the MacBook and Patrick is still — resolutely, stubbornly, idiotically — refusing to play along.

For the avoidance of any doubt, Pete would like the record to show that by this point (three months into their relationship, Christmas a distant memory of the exchange of gifts and blowjobs) he imagined Patrick would be a little more entrenched in his life. Instead, he hovers on the peripheries, staying with Pete because he’s scared of his own shadow, not because he _wants_ to be there. In honesty, Pete is starting to feel a little used.

If Patrick had the physiological capability to bear children, Pete would be tampering with his birth control. There’s nothing like a surprise pregnancy to usher a relationship along and he knows of websites with dummy copies of most major brands of mono and triphasic pill. Sadly, this isn’t an option with Patrick, with his thick, hard cock and waxed-smooth balls. Pete needs to think outside of the box.

“Are you working today?” he asks Patrick.

(Patrick: enters stage left, dressed in Pete’s sweatpants, his Bowie shirt; he is agitated, fearful as he leans up against Pete’s desk.)

“Yeah. I — I have a four o’clock.”

Yesterday, Pete waited until Patrick was occupied with a client — face down, some well-dressed dude with his mouth pressed into Patrick’s ass — and sprayed the words _fucking whore_ across the driver’s side of Patrick’s car in paint so red it smeared and dripped like blood. He has plans to do the same to his front door; he just needs to figure out how to do it without getting caught.

“A regular?” Pete asks, his sympathetic smile painted on like stage makeup. What he manages to infer is ‘a potential stalker’, he thrills with unimaginable power at the thought.

Patrick’s nod is watery, weak with the threat of tears. The pulse of power is thrilling. “Yeah. He’s always been nice, you know? I don’t think it’s him, he’s not like that, but…”

“Babe, it could be _anyone_. Psychos don’t take out billboards. But like, I’m right through the wall, you know? You yell or scream and I can be there in five minutes, tops. I mean, I get that a lot could happen in five minutes, and he’d probably make it out of the building before I got downstairs but — hey, don’t cry, come on.”

“I liked my job, I — I’m supposed to make people _happy_ ,” Patrick mumbles, thick and wetmessy and sniffed into the cup of his palms. This is probably not the time to point out that the level of naivety required to twist ‘orgasm’ into ‘happiness’ is off the chart of any and all measurable scale. “Why would one of them _do_ this?”

“Because they’re bad people,” Pete says as he pulls Patrick to him. For a second, he’s slack, warm in Pete’s arms as he presses his nose to the crook of Pete’s neck. “Because they don’t think of you as a real person. You’re a couple of holes to them, somewhere warm to come, they don’t—”

“Fuck you,” Patrick snaps, and shoves Pete away. This is unnecessary. Pete is already making plans involving the spray paint and the hallway outside of Patrick’s door. “I’m _not_ some cheap whore.”

He slams out of the apartment and Pete doesn’t stop him. He’s getting used to Patrick refusing to do as he should, but it doesn’t mean he likes it.

Proving he’s a whore, though in no way a cheap one, Patrick greets his client as Pete’s watch ticks to four. The guy accepts the offer of a drink, kisses Patrick on the couch, pulls him into his lap and buries his hands in Patrick’s hair. The sound quality of the cameras is exquisite; even the sound of a zipper is picked up, rasping through the speakers as Patrick lowers himself to his knees.

Pete watches without moving, through expensive wireless headphones, no more than ten feet from Patrick’s bed. He watches them move through the apartment, casting aside clothes until Patrick is naked, pale and pretty, his cock thick and hard. Finally, they collapse to the bed.

Pete tugs down his zipper and takes his own jealous half-hardness into his hand. He stops paying attention to his watch.

Beyond the window, the light shifts, a gold-soft glow to the room as Pete watches the laptop screen. Daylight fading, afternoon bleeding away into evening as he rubs his thumb against the plastic casing. He’s watched Patrick come twice, watched the way he twisted against his sheets as the guy with the expensive, steel-gray haircut and Rolex at his wrist ate his ass until he was weak and breathless. See, Patrick pretends he’s not into this and Pete _hates_ being lied to.

Right now, he’s on his back, thick, pale thighs wrapped around the guy’s waist, fingers twisted into the sheets. He’s soft though, his dick pink and flushed against his thigh, his toes curling with every deep, hard thrust he takes. The headboard knocks against the wall; Pete’s having a hard time imagining it’s not malicious. There’s an air of finality, of significant things shifting as the client finishes, blows his weak, past-his-prime load across Patrick’s chest and kisses him full and thick on the mouth.

Rage boils in Pete’s blood, twists his atoms into something ugly, jealous. The way Patrick is stroking the guy’s hair, the way he smiles and playfully wriggles his hips. If Pete were to commit murder, this tape would be his evidence of provocation and he knows — deeply and unshakably — that no judge or jury in the land would convict him.

He climbs to his feet as Patrick’s unworthy client shrugs back into his suit, pulling his jeans over his half-hard, slick-sticky cock and tugging on his sneakers before he can really overthink it. Envy is such an _ugly_ emotion, but Patrick seems unwilling to respond to anything but extremes. Doesn’t he _understand_? Can’t he comprehend how dangerous this is? There is, literally, a madman amongst his clientele (for a moment, a shuddered and uncertain second, Pete forgets that the madman is _him_ ) and he won’t accept the help that Pete is — selflessly — trying to offer him.

There’s little dignity in Pete’s jealousy, but less in Patrick’s ignorance, stupidity and sheer bullheadedness. That’s what Pete decides as he hurries down the stairs, not bothering to wait for the elevator, and heads down into the parking garage. The space is quiet, still. The eerie half-sense of lives continuing just out of reach as Pete waits, stupidly, fingertips tapping against the cool, gray breezeblocks right by the guest spot of 12b.

It takes around five minutes for him to appear. This is, perhaps, the time a less passionate man might use to calm down, to slink away and allow things to continue unchecked. Nevertheless, Pete feels things deeply, so he stays, his fury climbing with the numbers on his phone screen. The elevator door slides open, a hurried half conversation pouring into a cell phone balanced between the guy’s ear and his shoulder, his eyes trained on his Audi as he takes measured, privileged steps across the echoing parking lot. He walks like a man who fears nothing, who’s used to the world paving the way for his progress. Confident, wealthy, self-assured.

“I’ll be home real soon, yes. Another meeting, I know, I know. I’ll probably be out of town but — look, why don’t I tell you when I get home? I’m leaving the office right now,” fuck but he lies so easily, the woman — and it will be a woman — he swore to love entirely oblivious about the whereabouts of her husband’s cock mere minutes previously, “I’ll see you soon, honey. Love you, too.”

In the shadows, Pete waits. The flexing roar under his skin crescendos, the measured press of his pulse from his chest to his fingertips, hands in the pockets of his jacket as he stays entirely still. The guy is checking his phone, pausing to scroll through emails or texts, frowning for a moment as he points his key fob in the vague direction of his car. At Pete’s side, the locks of the Audi clunk, the lights flashing. Business Suit takes four steps forward and reaches for the door handle.

“Hey,” Pete says, pushing off from the wall.

“ _Jesus_!” Business Suit jumps, fear of black men in dark jackets appearing at the driver’s door of his car dancing in every word he doesn’t say. “I — I didn’t see you.”

“Does your wife know where you’ve been?” Pete asks, in lieu of pleasantries. Business Suit stares at him, calculating him, running up a price tag in his head, no doubt. “Does she know you’ve been fucking a whore? A whore with a _cock_? See, most wives would overlook you fucking your secretary, right? That’s par for the members-only golf course, but you — you’re not like your business buddies, are you?”

“Step away from my car.”

“Of course, _sir_ ,” and Pete moves closer, scrapes his keys deliberately along the ink-black exclusivity of that expensive German paint job. The metal scars through underneath, Business Suit is squeaking something about calling the police. “Will you?” Pete asks, gouging his key a little harder, paint and steel curling up like cresting waves. “Go ahead, call them. Explain why you were here.”

“I was visiting a friend,” he says, lips tight, face pale.

Pete snorts. “A friend who’s thirty years younger than you? A friend who looks like _that_ with a valid license to work as an escort in the state of California?”

“Is this — are you _blackmailing_ me?” he asks, eyes narrowed. “You’re his fucking _pimp_ or—”

The rest of the sentence remains unspoken, stolen by the way his ribs shape to the side of his car with a winded groan. Pete holds him there, hands fisted into the lapels of his jacket, strains up to bring their faces close. “Oh, I’m worse than that. I’m his boyfriend. Stay the fuck away from him.”

“That’s up to Patrick,” his fingers are fumbling uselessly at the door handle, sliding slippery against his sweaty palm; it’s pointless, it’s held closed by their combined body weight, “you don’t get to decide if—”

“Stay the fuck away from him,” Pete repeats, dark with menace. “And this won’t have to escalate.”

He leaves him panting, trembling, like Patrick did to him but so much worse, and heads for the stairwell without looking back.

*

“I’m losing clients,” Patrick murmurs. “I guess they heard about the vandalism.”

It has nothing to do with their cars; men will overlook many things for tight heat around their cocks. They’re more concerned about the shadow monster, the lurking frightener in darkened parking lots who whispers promises of repercussions to come. It’s too easy, scaring them away. Threatening their family life and the illusion of solid, all-American stability that they depend on in their jobs. The American dream never looked so good as it does on a man who’s dick is still slippery with lube his wife doesn’t know about.

“You know the offer still stands to move in with me,” Pete says, straining against the way Patrick has him tied to the bed frame. If this is an unusual time to have this conversation, Patrick’s face doesn’t show it. He’s getting used to it now, the expectation that physical nakedness exacerbates his emotional vulnerability, that these times are for sharing secrets.

Patrick cocks his head and jerks his hips, the lust-thick swell of his cock throbbing raw inside of Pete. He reaches up, pale hands closing around Pete’s throat, exactly how he likes, his vision spotting at the edges as Patrick whispers. “Maybe you’re right.” He presses down harder against Pete’s windpipe.

Pete comes, glorious heat and cramped-gut desperate.

*

Pete focuses single-mindedly on rendering Patrick compliant, defenseless, _dependent_. Parking lot warnings drift to waiting in the elevator, in turn _that_ becomes standing on the doorstep of exclusive homes in places like Malibu, Trousdale and Beverly Hills. Systematically, Pete destroys Patrick’s client base, dismantles his livelihood with threats of exposure, of photographs and headlines and emails landing on the desks of Fortune 500 CEOs.

Right now, Pete is lurking in the shadows by the mock-Spanish splendor of a villa in Sherman Oaks. It’s completely ridiculous that city officials — in this case, the city attorney, Robert Lyne — list their addresses in the public domain. A few clicks, keystrokes, all it took to arm Pete with all the information he need to stage a late-night warning. Against the curb, his Range Rover looks entirely at home, no raised eyebrows or rabble-roused neighborhood watch patrols appearing to flush him out of hiding.

The car draws onto the drive a little after eight; a hundred grand of shiny German engineering in discreet dark gray. The man that steps from the car is thin, weasel-sharp with slicked back hair and the confident air of someone who has no idea what’s coming. Pete waits until his key is in the door before he steps from the shadows.

“Hey.”

The way Robert skitters sideways, hurling himself against the stucco like he’s expecting Pete to pull a gun is equal parts hilarious and gratifying. The last time Patrick saw this guy, he was coming across Patrick’s face, smearing it with the pad of his thumb as Patrick moaned like he was eager for it. But Pete is a reasonable man, he’s willing to keep his dislike under control.

“Who — who are you? What are you doing here? This is a private neighborhood, you can’t just—”

“I’m here to talk to you about Patrick,” Pete says, voice level. Robert flinches visibly. “What’s wrong, Robert — hey, I can call you _Bob_ , right? I mean, you fucked my boyfriend, after all.”

“I — I never. I — I’m a married man.”

“Me too! Hey, that’s awesome, right? Sanctity of marriage, what a fucking _trip_ , am I right? Anyway, the thing is, _Bob_ , I’m here to tell you to stay away from Patrick. Permanently. Think you can do that for me?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Across four feet of red-tiled porch, Robert — _Bob_ — considers him with sour dislike. Pete shouldn’t have shown up in jeans, he should have made an effort. He smiles but suspects it doesn’t reach his eyes as he leans against the wall, firmly between Bob and his front door. There are lights on in the house and another car on the driveway. Pete’s smile widens.

“Is your wife home?” he asks sweetly; Bob flinches. “Oh boy, we should get her out here for this, don’t you think? I mean, it’s only right that she knows where you’ve been shoving your dick.”

“Stay the hell away from my family,” Bob snarls, a sudden spitfire of fury, like he’s just realized he has a six inch height advantage without acknowledging the fact that Pete could probably bench press him with one hand. “I can make assholes like you disappear—”

Pete clucks his tongue and wags his finger, a disapproving mother scolding a truculent child. “Now, now, _Bob_. Don’t go making silly threats. I’m being reasonable, just stay away from Patrick and I won’t have to let the lovely Mrs Lyne know why her husband’s always in a meeting on Thursday afternoons. Doesn’t that sound good?”

“I don’t know anyone named Patrick.”

Pete rolls his eyes. “Cute. To specify,” and here Pete raises his voice a little, the threat of a screaming crescendo in cookie-cutter suburbia, “I mean the _rent boy_ you’ve been fucking. Blond, about so high, _huge_ dick, does that sound familiar, Bob? Do you know who I’m talking about now?”

“Shut up!” Bob hisses, puce with rage and, probably, an impending heart attack. “Just shut your fucking mouth. Do you want money? Is that it? I — I’ll go to the police.”

God, they always threaten him with the police. “Look buddy, I’ll tell you what I told the others — and there’s a _lot_ of _others_ — do you really want to stand there, in front of the cops, and tell them your hooker’s boyfriend is threatening you?”

Sensibly, Bob doesn’t answer.

“I’m just saying. Stay away from Patrick and I stay away from you and your gorgeous wife. Janice, isn’t it? Oh, and how’s Tommy doing at Stanford? Man, I would _hate_ to have to pay him a visit and find out if he knows—”

“Enough! That’s — that’s enough,” Bob is gray, sweating, Pete is humming with the pulse-bright power of it, “Stay away from me.”

“And you’ll stay away from Patrick?”

“Whatever the hell he’s called, yes, I’ll stay away.”

“You’re one of the smart ones, no backbone at all,” Pete claps him on the shoulder and relishes in the way Bob shrinks back away from him, “I like you. I ever need a lawyer, you’ll be the last one I call.”

He drives back to West Hollywood with the radio cranked loud and the windows rolled down, the Los Angeles cloud of gasoline fumes consuming him like party pills.

When he get back, Pete finds the apartment shrouded in silence. The TV is on, but muted, Patrick cast in shadow and light that flickers along the planes of his cheekbones, the elegant sweep of his nose. He’s collapsed, a man in ruin, his shoulders hunched and his hands clasped loosely between his knees. He’s never looked better.

In the doorway, Pete waits for him to look up. He doesn’t. “Why’d you do it?”

It’s an open question, Pete isn’t a fan of those. The marriage counsellor said they were not a useful tool for effective communication, that questions should be specific and requests well phrased. Ashlee used many open questions. Ashlee used _that_ particular open question more than once.

“I don’t know what you mean,” he says, instead of answering. If there is one thing a man with the vastness of Pete’s intellect at his disposal knows, it’s that he should only admit to precisely as much as Patrick can prove. He drops his car keys into the bowl on the counter, goes to the fridge. “I feel like Jamaican food for dinner. You want a beer?”

“No, I don’t want a fucking _beer_ ,” Patrick hisses, meeting Pete’s eyes. He’s angry, which is understandable, he’s angry because he doesn’t understand that this is for the best. Pete has spent four months shifting the boundaries of Patrick’s reality, drawing him into the lovesong of his script. He’s provided the lyrics, he needs Patrick to pitch him the melody.

He shrugs against the countertop and raises his eyebrows. “Is something wrong, babe?”

“I know what you’ve done, I just want an explanation. You’ve ruined my fucking _life_ , Pete! I — the agency called me, they told me my _pimp_ has been showing up at client’s houses. My fucking _pimp_!”

That is unfair.

“I never told anyone that I’m your pimp,” Pete feels it’s important that Patrick understands the reasoning behind his actions, that if Patrick realizes all of this is his own fault for refusing the follow the script, they can start over and make this good, “I specifically told them I’m _not_ your pimp, I’m your boyfriend. All I’m doing is looking out for you, don’t you get it? Whoever’s doing this shit to your apartment, to your car, _they’re_ the sick fuck, not me.”

When Patrick took an expensive overnight with a high-ranking police officer two days ago, the first thing that greeted them in the hallway the next morning was the word _pigfucker_. Pete watched their reactions on the hallway camera, he’s taken screenshots of the twisted pale of Patrick’s horrified face, his hand clasped to his mouth like he needs it to hold the fear inside. The Deputy Chief of Police will be in the market for another warm hole for his cock.

“I don’t need you to take care of me,” Patrick says to a spot on the wall over Pete’s shoulder, “I’m not a child and I didn’t ask you to protect me. I can take care of this myself.”

Pete pops the tab on his beer and lets his lips curl into a smirk. “No, you’re totally right, you’re handling this just fine. Hey, that graffiti outside your front door is looking _great_.” Patrick is doing a fantastic impersonation of a spoilt little boy, lower lip trembling, scowling fierce. Pete will not negotiate with emotional terrorists. “And when was the last time you slept in your own apartment? You know, by yourself, not when you’re getting dicked by—”

“ _Why don’t you fucking understand_?” Patrick roars to his feet, pacing around the coffee table, expressive hands a blur. That under-the-skin sensation pours through Pete, the flex and push of the darkness that simmers beneath the surface pressing at skin and sinew. He’s too large for the physical vessel that holds him, too much for Patrick to handle. He flexes his fingers against the countertop until his knuckles glow bone-bright beneath the skin. “I’m not your fucking _project_ , I’m not — I don’t rely on you for any of this, I didn’t _ask_ you to scare anyone off and — and I’m going to lose my fucking _career_ over this! Do you know how hard I’ve worked at this? How long it takes to build up a reputation like mine? I’m supposed to be fucking _discreet_ and you’re out there, _threatening_ my clients? You’re a fucking _psycho_ —”

In movies, the sound of knuckles to flesh is always exaggerated; a sharp crack of bone against skin as heads snap back. In reality, it’s dull, barely a wet thump as Patrick jerks away, hands thrown up to protect himself. Funny, Pete doesn’t remember crossing the room but here he is, fist pulled back to take a second shot — if he needs to — the other tight in the chest of Patrick’s polo shirt.

He doesn’t need to take a second swing, doesn’t tighten the cotton until Patrick chokes on the disgusting, ungrateful _lies_ pouring from him like stagnant overflow. He doesn’t need to, because Patrick falls still and silent, blinking at him from wide, terrified eyes, the right one swollen sore already. This is the kind of bullshit Ashlee used to say about him, even though the counsellor told her she was wrong.

When he speaks, it’s slow, calm. His grip on the shirt tightens. “I am _not_ a fucking psycho. I’m your _boyfriend_ and I’m concerned about you.”

Slowly, his fingers unwind from Patrick’s shirt. Patrick steps away, reaches for the bag dropped at the side of the couch. He backs across the living room, his eyes never leaving Pete in the semi-gloom blue light of the muted TV. At the doorway, he pauses — halfway to slamming the door — and hisses venom that slides, the blotch-blue spread of bruising, under Pete’s ribs and into the gore-red cavity of his chest.

“You’re _not_ my fucking boyfriend, douchebag. Stay the fuck away from me.”

The door slams.

It’s unfair. It always is. No one _ever_ understands that everything Pete does is with their best interests at heart.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I want to make one thing abundantly clear and this goes for everyone, of every orientation, regardless of who you're in a relationship with. 
> 
> IF THEY EVER LAY HANDS ON YOU, EVER, FOR ANY REASON, YOU WALK AWAY AND YOU NEVER, EVER LOOK BACK. Patrick just did the first sensible thing he's done in this story, HE WALKED AWAY. There is NO EXCUSE that validates a person's decision to lay their hands on another person. Abusers will tell you that you deserved it THEY ARE WRONG, NOONE deserves it. There are other methods, communication, or just admitting that this isn't the relationship for you. No one has any right to hit you, be they your spouse, your partner or your parent. 
> 
> Okay, that's Snitches PSA for the day. I'd love to hear what you think either in the comment box or over on tumblr @sn1tchesandtalkers.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Final chapter, friends. Who’s suitably braced to see what Pete can come up with this time? See you at the end.

Patrick doesn’t come back.

When Ashlee left, Pete didn’t miss her. He disliked the way she thought she knew best, that she could walk away from him when that wasn’t part of his plan. But the thing he felt most viscerally was relief. He’s not sure he actively misses _Patrick_ , but he hates the way the bedsheets shape cold on one side, the spot on the couch where he’d curl with his feet tucked under him left empty. Pete shreds each page of the pretentious novel, tips the expensive wine down the sink, feeds the vinyl one by one down the garbage chute.

It doesn’t make him feel any closer to absolution.

The problem with Patrick is that he is, quite simply, entirely ungrateful for everything Pete’s done for him. Each selfless act of heroic altruism is kicked back, every offer, attempt and gentle encouragement towards betterment has been twisted, turned and shoved between Pete’s shoulder blades. Patrick is the scorpion riding on the back of the frog, orchestrating his own end with the pitiless drive of his sting because – as he sees it – it’s in his nature.

But Pete won’t let them sink. He’s got this grand plan, this master manipulation lined up in his back pocket. Patrick will understand when it all falls into place and in the meantime, Pete can watch every move he makes in glorious high-definition.

He buys another laptop, links it up so he can watch Patrick as he works. It’s almost like they’re sitting together, watching the same TV shows, listening to the same music, companionable silence stretching between them as Pete works. Sometimes, Pete will whisper a witty observation to the screen. Occasionally, Patrick smiles, like he can hear him.

It’s going well, the screenplay wrapping up as Pete moves into the final act. He has a finale sketched out, the big ending, he smiles whenever he thinks about it.

Of course, it fucks up with a phone call.  

“Pete,” Andy says, halfway between cautious and resigned, “you good?”

“Mmhmm, pretty good, yeah.” Pete isn’t really listening, watching Patrick with a new client; he’s younger, rougher, Pete’s pretty sure Patrick isn’t making close to as much as he was a few weeks ago. He’s getting desperate, taking on clients from outside of the agency. It really is only a matter of time until he meets someone dangerous. “What’s up?”

“Listen,” Andy mutters; Pete hums softly to demonstrate he’s doing just that. “I – I really didn’t want to do this over the phone but, like, you’re not responding to meeting requests or – or _anything._ ”

“Oh shit! The fucking scripts, am I right? Damn, I’ll get those – get them right to you,” Pete trails off, watches the way Patrick slides to his knees and tugs down the kind of jeans Pete has in his own closet. The guy has a tiny cock but acts like it’s huge, pressing Patrick down onto him with a sharp jerk of his hips.

“We’re kind of past that point,” Andy says, something in his tone has changed, some dark inflection that catches the flammable edge of Pete’s attention. Under his skin, he stretches, flexing dark against the inevitable confrontation. “Pete, I – we’re terminating your contract.”

“ _Excuse_ me?” There’s no possible way that Pete heard that correctly, no universe in which he, Pete Wentz, is fired from the show he brought into being. “That almost sounds like you’re firing me but, like, you wouldn’t do that, would you?”

“You haven’t turned in a script in _four months_! I’ve tried, I really have, I’ve called meetings, sent you emails, left you voicemails but—”

“You know I’ll sue you, don’t you?” Pete asks, eyes still fixed on Patrick. His gut twists with furious jealousy. “You know I’ll take this as far as I need to until you’re fucking _nothing_.”

“You can’t sue us,” Andy sighs, he sounds done. “You haven’t delivered a single script on the new season—”

Irritated, Pete waves a hand. “I’ll get one to you by the end of the week.”

“We already started _filming_! Look man, I’m sorry, I really am, and if you want to lawyer up then go right ahead. But you won’t win. Maybe when everything calms down we can go for a drink or something. I’m worried about you. Are you—”

Pete hangs up before he can say anymore. He watches Patrick in silence for a second then pushes to his feet, walks into the hallway and down to the elevator. He rides to the parking garage and finds the four-year-old Volkswagen parked in 12b’s guest spot.

He puts his fist through the driver’s window and imagines how well the dudebro in Patrick’s bed might take it.

*

There’s a special kind of silence in the limerance between late and early, even in Los Angeles. The light strips away to shades of amethyst tinged with gold from the streetlights as it slants through the blinds in Pete’s bedroom, the traffic as close to calm as it gets. Patrick’s bedroom is dark, silent, the shape of him outlined like a death mask under his Egyptian cotton sheets.

In his bedroom, at his desk, Pete works under the synthetic glow of his lamp. Ten cameras at unprofessional angles; it’s not a glamor shoot but it’s enough to put together a masterpiece. Pete has selected his cast with care; the city attorney, the Deputy Chief of Police and the junior Senator. He trims his narrative, shows Patrick’s best side and divides hours of footage down into three neat files saved to his desktop.

He watches each one from beginning to end; thirty-minute showpieces set to music that isn’t soft enough to drown out voices, to hide the way these men moan for a whore. Pete considers his options on Google, selecting only the most prolific amateur sites and contemplating for a moment how unfair it is that Patrick never shared his last name.

He loads the files, watches the intermittent hell of the rolling blue bar and then, finger poised, considers the sum total of his actions so far. This is his death blow. This is the thing that will drive Patrick back through the wall and into his arms.

He hits upload. He waits a minute then carefully copies and pastes each link into an email, an address tapped into the send bar, then pauses, phone raised to his ear.

The voice that answers is drowsy, unamused. “Pete? The fuck are you doing, man? It’s three in the fucking morning.”

They say the news never sleeps, but apparently the people that write it _do_. Mikey is an old college friend, brother of Gerard, the one that got a real fucking job and went into journalism. He’s something relatively high-up, news editor or copy editor or something that isn’t quite editor-in-chief of the digital branch of ABC News.

“Michael,” he greets him softly, eyes on the wall that separates him from Patrick’s living room. “How’s it going?”

“It’s still three in the fucking morning, dipshit. I have a six-month-old, what do you _want_?”

“How’s work?” Pete asks, conversational and bright. He can hear the way Mikey grits his teeth. “Life? The wife?”

“Seriously, asshole,” Mikey cuts him off, Pete’s finger hovers over the send button. “What?”

“I hear you’re chasing the deputy editor role at the website,” Pete says softly; Mikey’s shift to interested is palpable, the scent of blood in the water. Pete can imagine the way he rolls to his stomach and reaches for those blocky, designer glasses.

“And?” Mikey almost makes it sound like he doesn’t care.

“I’m about to send you something that’s gonna make those assholes CNN wish they’d snapped you up years ago,” Pete can taste the victory at the back of his tongue, his fingers tingling with anticipation.

“Oh?” Mikey prompts, careful, like Pete is a wild animal that might spook if he speaks too loudly. “What’s that?”

“Get to your laptop and stay on the line while you watch it.”

*

Fifteen minutes later, Mikey breathes deeply down the line. “Holy shit. How much do you want for it?”

In the darkness, Pete smiles at Patrick through the screen. “Nothing. Just make sure it runs tomorrow.”

*

Pete shapes himself around his laptop for the rest of the night. He hits refresh like it’s his new religion, sculpting prayer in the shape and sound of the homepage and pop-up ads for Taco Bell. It hits at five — Mikey must have worked through — a devastating headline and carefully cropped screenshots that skate just the right side of public decency. There’s a link, for anyone that wants to view the damnation of the keepers of the country’s safety and democracy at their very worst, balls-deep in a call boy in an unnamed apartment building somewhere in West Hollywood.

The TV stations pick it up within the hour, pundits and talking heads called in to discuss the morality of those who swear to serve their nation whilst pounding the ass of an anonymous dude for cash. It’s not clear if it’s the sex, the cost or the gender of the hooker that concerns America the most. Pete revels in it over his morning coffee.

 _Known only as ‘Patrick’_ , that’s how they refer to him, his face unpixelated at Pete’s insistence. Pete is caught between pride and fixation, an ear to the wall and his eye on his laptop for the moment Patrick turns on the news.

When it happens, it is entirely, hopelessly glorious. Patrick wakes late, as usual, reaches for his phone and struggles up against the pillows. One arm tucked behind his head and beautiful paleness on display, he scruffs his fingers through his hair and frowns down at the screen. He pauses, hauls himself upright and swings his legs over the mattress. He stares down at his phone in palpable disbelief.

“What the _fuck_?” For once, Pete doesn’t need the camera to hear it echoing, rife with sceptical fury, through plasterboard and paint.

He scrambles for his television, flicking through the news channels and considering the line of his own spine, his head tossed back as he rides the Deputy Chief of Police through the mattress. The impeccable round of his ass is blurred. His face is not. He repeats, hysterical, “ _What the fuck_?”

His phone vibrates — the during-the-night-silence lifted — and he raises it to his ear. Pete shuffles forward in his seat and listens, half a conversation booming through his speakers and through the wall.

“Bob? What the fuck is going on? I — I didn’t… No! No, it’s not like that! I don’t even — I would _never_ record them! Why would I _do_ that? What can I — but, it wasn’t _me_! I’ve had this — someone’s been showing up in my apartment when I’m not around, and — they must’ve — I _didn’t_ — no, wait, don’t — you can’t just — I’ve been on the books for _five years_ , man! Bob — Bob, _wait_ , I — _please_!”

Patrick stills, staring at the screen.Pete has a camera directly above the television and one at the wall near the bedroom door, this means he can watch Patrick’s face, trace it with artistic care for the precise second his world falls apart around him. It’s exquisite. It’s _magnificent_. In his pants, Pete’s cock stirs. Ten feet away but in another universe entirely, Patrick, slow-motion smooth, buries his face in his hands and staggers back to the couch.

In his own apartment, on his own couch, Pete smiles. He is in control. He’s basically God; omniscient, omnipresent.

Vengeful.

He crosses the living room, brushes his lips against the party wall and takes a breath. “Patrick?”

The MacBook screen shows him that Patrick isn’t moving, frozen entirely, cocooned in the knowledge that there’s no possible escape from Pete. He blinks slowly, descending back into the room as the news hums on from the television. He’s wearing his glasses but nothing else, slightly askew on the bridge of his nose, endless pale curled in on himself against the couch cushions.

“Patrick, are you listening to me? I saw the news.”

There’s a gorgeous haze on his movements as he shakes his head, forgetting that Pete can’t see him — even though Pete can — his lip bitten hard between his teeth.

“You did this, didn’t you?” he asks softly, the thought erupting, each piece of the puzzle of the past few months sliding neatly into place. God, Pete thought he’d never figure it out, he’s despised him for his gullible stupidity whilst exploiting it for every advantage its offered him. “ _You_ fucking _did_ this, _didn’t you_?”

“What you need to understand,” Pete says, his voice low, his inflection calm and collected, it is very important that Patrick understands the motivation behind what may seem to him, a lesser man, like madness, “is that this is for the best. For us. We can move forward now.”

Patrick has his phone in his hand, pacing his bedroom as he stares down at the screen. Animal fear crawls through each flex of his shoulders, his thighs, his eyes darting frantically around the room. He reaches up, brushes his fingertips against the wall and comes away with something caught in his hand.

Camera four.

He stares down at it. His disbelief is palpable, the revelation that Pete is the one in control shuddering through him like aftershocks. A slow smile curls its curdled way across Pete’s lips;  _finally_.

“Patrick, are you listening to me?”

“You – you planted these,” he whispers, his Scooby Doo moment – it _wasn’t_ a ghoul or a spook or a monster, it was old man Jenkins! – skittering across the elegant lines of his mouth, his eyes springing wide, caught in beautiful hi-resolution and tucked neatly into Pete’s hard drive. “You told me you cared about me and then you fucking _spied_ on me? You’re _insane_!”

Pete is tired of the things he hasn’t been allowed to say, the carefully contrived veneer of keeping his distance. He’s owned every movement Patrick makes from the moment he steps over the threshold of his apartment, until the second he leaves it. And yes, it’s irritating that Patrick is less than thrilled with this revelation that, as expected, he’s going to pretend this is something other than a delicately executed attempt to keep him safe from the real villains in this love story. But Pete’s close to certain he can talk him around.

The pretty ones are never that bright.

“Baby,” he begins – it’s important to keep Patrick on side, to make him feel protected, “you know I only did this because there was no other way to keep you safe. You thought someone was going into your place, I just thought—”

“That was you,” Patrick is frozen, still naked, glasses balanced adorably on the bridge of his nose. Pete pauses; he didn’t imagine Patrick would figure it out quite so quickly. “You did that, didn’t you? You – when I had you come over to let the super inside! You fucking _asshole_! I’m going to the police, you’re a fucking _nutjob_!”

Okay, Pete is going to back right up and knock a couple of perceived IQ points back off his pretty little whore. He rolls his eyes and smiles indulgently. “The police? Do you _really_ think the LAPD are going to come riding to your rescue when you outed their Deputy Chief? Oh, he had his dick all the way up inside you, that was a good one, watching you fucking squirm for him. Did he feel good, Patrick?”

This is the moment, the electric, golden soap bubble moment, where Patrick bends or breaks. Where he succumbs entirely to what Pete wants him to be or kicks back. Pete’s not sure which way he wants it to go; compliance is such a desirable trait in a partner but a fight is always fun, too. Patrick demonstrates his intentions in a gesture of explosive, irrevocable fury, the tiny camera placed on the dresser, a bottle of expensive cologne snatched and slammed, a temporary battering ram, into plastic and microchips.

On Pete’s laptop, camera four shudders out of service.

“Sick motherfucker,” Patrick screams through the wall, lips flecked wet with spit, “you fucking psychopathic piece of goddamn _shit_!”

He grabs his phone, examines the screen for a moment and then takes off around the bedroom, snatching at the cameras as he finds them, referring to the footage for angles, positions, potential hiding places. On the laptop, cameras flash out of service as Patrick howls his rage through the wall. In the center of his living room, Pete watches, waits, tense through every muscle until his jaw aches and his fingers cramp. His guts are burnt up, roiling with fury as Patrick picks through the apartment and locates each possible point of unknown voyeurism.

Finally, breathless and furious, Patrick’s voice shudders through the drywall, his mouth clearly very close. “You’re a fucking sociopath. I want you to stay the fuck away from me. For real this time.”

“Sweetheart,” Pete says, teeth gritted, rage flaring through his vascular system, each artery, vein and capillary flooded black and ugly, “I did this for you. For _us_. I know you don’t understand right now, you’re not smart enough to figure it out but—”

“ _Stay the fuck away from me you fucking psycho_!”

He punctuates the last of his childish temper tantrum with his knuckles cracking against the plaster. On the wall, Pete’s Ikea prints shudder, shake, one falls to the floor. Apartment 12b falls silent; entirely, totally, absolutely. Pete reviews his belief that there is no such thing as a complete absence of sound.

The sum of Pete’s universe is decreasing. He’s robbed of his career, his boyfriend, his cameras, it seems that his specified circle of interests decreasing rapidly. The world is so very unfair to men like Pete.

*

The screenplay comes together beautifully without Patrick providing constant distraction through the wall.

Pete gives up on sleep unless his body screams for it, barely eats, doesn’t watch TV or speak to his friends — not that he has _friends_ to speak to, rather a collection of carefully grouped, backstabbing assholes. Instead, he devotes himself to the shape of his keyboard under his fingers, half an ear on the wall for the sound of Patrick on the other side. Patrick remains resolutely silent.

It draws to a close on an unremarkable Wednesday afternoon, the freeway roaring by beyond his window, the low-hum sounds of apartment living creaking on around him. He sits back and rolls the knot of agonized tension from between his shoulder blades. He pops each knuckle on his right hand, then gets to work on the left.

_The End._

His love story is complete, his magnum opus, the sum total of everything Pete is and all he imagines he can be is stacked in front of him in a carefully constructed Pages document. All he needs is the correct conductor, the magnificence of a mind that appreciates his artistic vision sufficiently to hinge the whole symphony together. Every interaction is scored, each moment of soaring bliss and the depth of each time Patrick didn’t understand laid out and ready for cinematic recreation.

There’s literally no way Patrick can fail to understand this.

He gets to work on promotion. He may have found himself confined to weeknight television, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t made connections. The name Pete Wentz means something, of course it does, the wittiest mind in the sharpest writing team in Hollywood. It’s a goddamn miracle that none of the powerhouse production companies have been in touch with him yet, it’s not like his removal from the team has gone unnoticed in the press. Pete assumes they’re giving him time to cool off, to find himself and recenter his creative vision. As if Pete is the kind of man to rest on his heels and wait for the world to find him.

Each producer he chooses is hand-picked, selected like the summer-hang of ripe fruit, chosen on a roster of movies that cover the kind of love song Pete wants to sing to Patrick through movie theaters both national and international. There’s no way something like this won’t be nominated for an Academy Award, it needs the right name behind it from the start. He lines them up, a dozen emails sent without the script attached. Pete isn’t an idiot and he won’t be signing a release; his script is his, intellectual property laws will not allow some hack to steal away with his sonnet and reproduce it in some trashy, made-for-television Hallmark holiday special.

Pete closes his laptop and brushes his fingers against the wall. If he rests his ear to the paint and closes his eyes, he can almost imagine he can hear Patrick humming in the shower.

*

The silence is broken at three in the morning, Patrick’s speakers shoved against the bedroom wall and cranked to full volume, blasting Norwegian battle metal through the drywall until Pete is demented with the ringing clang of dissonant electric guitars and warring drums.

Robbed of the first real sleep he’s enjoyed since Patrick smashed the cameras, Pete stares out of the window and wonders if it was Patrick or Ray that came up with this idea. He figures Patrick can’t keep this up for long.

*

Patrick does it every night. Waiting desperately for a response to his emails, Pete starts to wonder if Patrick possibly has one of those personality disorders Joe used to talk about. He wonders if he ought to text him the therapist’s number. It couldn’t hurt to have him work out his issues before he gets over his temper tantrum and comes back.

*

The reply comes in a week after Pete sent out the emails, an innocuous reply from a bland-looking email address. Pete assumes it’s an assistant and immediately deducts percentile points of the shared profit from a producer who doesn’t have the good sense to contact him directly.

It’s to the point, a missive arranging a meeting through the shared catalog of their Google calendars, instruction to meet at some fashionable little coffee shop out in Malibu and to bring the script along with him. Whoever said that the only way to generate interest in a project was to give the whole thing away in a neat little PDF document clearly didn’t have the wit, talent or common sense granted to Pete. He’s kept his idea safe, stored neatly in his hard drive and nowhere else; no one will take this from him without his express consent and a large check.

They want to meet immediately, the director, leaving Pete with very little choice but to shove his laptop into his messenger bag, to shrug on a shirt he’s sure is clean enough and race down the stairs and behind the wheel of his Range Rover. The paintwork on Patrick’s BMW is pristeen once more, repaired and repainted, a little dusty from lack of use.

Maybe they’ll move, when all of this is fixed up. Maybe Pete will find them a place out towards the ocean where he can go running along the beach and Patrick can watch him from the floor-to-ceiling windows in one of those beautiful, beach-side condos out in Malibu. They can adopt: kids and dogs, both are good for the image. Honestly, he has no idea why Patrick is resisting this.

He finds the coffee shop easily enough: vegan, fair trade, ethically elitist in all the ways Andy loves and Pete can’t stand. They sit towards the back; a short, fat dude dressed in greasy sweat and too-thick glasses, his pretty little redheaded assistant at his side. She’s Pete’s type; pale, beautiful, delicately petite. The way she looks at him lets him know he could take her back to his place and have Patrick spend a couple of hours listening in on what he’s missing out on.

“I’m Mark,” the guy introduces himself; Pete gives him his most professional smile but sneaks the chick a wink; he’ll bet the contents of his checking account that she’s fucking the boss and figures it can’t harm to show her the kind of dick she _could_ be riding. “This is—”

“Pete,” he offers his hand and shakes Mark’s, notes the grip is wet, warm, weak; he doesn’t need to be introduced to the assistant. “Nice to meet you. I’m just _super_ excited to work with you on this, your studio is one of the first ones I contacted.” It’s not, but the lie won’t hurt, Mark smiles wide and bright. “I think you’re really gonna love it.”

“Actually,” Red interrupts, smiling that tight, polite smile that Ashlee used to give him when he said the wrong thing in front of her parents, “I’m Hayley, _I’m_ the producer. Mark here is my production assistant.”

For a second, Pete is immensely grateful that he didn’t hold up a hand to stop her talking from the start. Still, he _likes_ a woman who thinks she’s in charge, it’s so much more rewarding when they submit to him so he turns the charm up a couple of notches and offers to get her another coffee.

“No thank you,” she shakes her head, her lip curled into a smile. “Okay, you brought the screenplay along with you?”

“I sure did,” Pete says slowly, indulgently, pulling his MacBook from his bag and firing it into life. He pauses, the document open but pivoted protectively towards him as he glances up, gives her the doe eyes and smiles. “You’re not going to rip me off, are you? Because I have, like, a whole bunch of lawyers. Everything on here is subject to copyright.”

“Mr Wentz,” she laughs, tinkling and pretty, and touches the back of his hand. “I can assure you that nothing you show me today will leave this cafe. Mark here is going to read over it while you and I have a talk through the finer details.”

“But he’s only an assistant.” Pete’s smile hasn’t slipped but his tolerance for the situation might be starting to nosedive. He’s not here to be pushed around by a couple of timewasters.

“He’s got a real eye for detail,” Hayley assures him. Because Pete hasn’t slept properly in over a week, because he’s exhausted and strung out and not thinking straight, he pushes the laptop towards Mark. He hesitates, half a heartbeat, hand still curled around he case. “Don’t you want to tell me your pitch?” He let’s go, Mark takes the laptop and Pete turn his attention back to Hayley.

“Okay,” he begins, pauses for dramatic effect and leans a little closer. Hayley mirrors him, her forearms braced to the table and he wonders precisely how easy it would be to talk this pretty little thing into bed. She’s embarrassingly eager. “Let me tell you my love story…”

In honesty, Pete’s been imagining something a little more climactic than twenty minutes in an independent coffee shop in Malibu. He was expecting a little more than the opportunity to outline his story whilst Hayley nods enthusiastically and drops in witty observations at all the right moments while Mark frowns, silent, fingers skating the keys as he navigates through the screenplay.

Pete supposes it doesn’t really matter when the end result is exactly what he expects.

“This all sounds _great_ ,” says Hayley, swinging her bag onto her shoulder as Mark tap-tap-taps a final time and clicks the laptop closed. “Honestly, we’re really excited about this, and we want you to be completely involved. Total creative freedom. I need to speak to a few higher-ups,” she rolls her eyes, invoking visions of dusty old men in need of persuasion to take on this, the greatest tale brought to the silver screen in decades, “but honestly, expect more contact in the next couple of weeks. I’m thinking Zac Efron, Bradley Cooper, big, _big_ things, you know? Ciao, babe!”

They leave, air kisses drenched in expensive perfume, hurrying out of the coffee shop and into the car parked right outside. It’s big, black, expensive. Breathless with anticipation and vindicated entirely, Pete pulls his laptop to his chest and considers calling Patrick. Instead, he finishes his coffee and fires a text to Andy.

_Go fuck yourself, asshole, and your shitty show. Some of us are going places._

It takes maybe an hour for him to arrive back at the apartment, for him to settle himself at his desk with a beer and the self-congratulatory opportunity to read back through the screenplay. He waits, watching the screen, for his usual screensaver to flare into life. But instead of Patrick smiling from the screen, he’s greeted with a high-defintion, deeply impersonal shot of the Himalayas. Mark, he decides irritably, is a fucking idiot, clicking on shit he doesn’t understand.

There’s no password though, no link to his profile. Only the home screen with the factory-setting apps staring back at him.

Deep in the recesses of Pete’s mind, something cold and panicked begins to stir.

He scrambles for his documents folder and finds it entirely empty. Fury burning bright in his gut, he clicks through icon after icon, searching hidden folders, deleted items, everything empty, new, factory reset and ready for action. That bastard, that utter fucking _asshole_ , has completely wiped everything, every page, every word, every keystroke. Gone.

This has to be okay, Pete scrolls through his phone and searches frantically for a way to pull the information back from the electronic ether. There’s nothing. From his desk, a portable USB drive smirks up at him in outright, hostile accusation. Pete didn’t save a backup copy, didn’t think he needed to, didn’t think it was sensible to have multiple copies lying around where anyone could find them.

Rage coils through him, snaking through that hidden monster lurking just beneath his surface. He screams, animal-sound torn bright and burning from the back of his throat as he snatches his phone, draws it back and hurls it to splinter, to crack and smash and scar holes in the wall between his apartment and Patrick’s. He has no doubt whatsoever that the producer will steal his story, that he’ll be left with nothing to prove he ever existed in the creative process, his life’s work snatched and torn away from him.

It’s not fair.

On the screen in front of him, something catches his eye. A tiny icon tucked away beneath the factory presets and Safari browser window. _Obsess Over You.mov._

Listen, Pete is not an idiot. He’s an educated man, well-versed in scams and viruses and malicious bastards tearing away months of work he can never recapture. He’s bold with white-hot fury, though, his nails sinking into his palms, hands shaking and, viciously, he stabs at the icon with his mouse and watches the software open.

On the screen, Patrick grins at him once again. But this time, it’s not the slutty smile from his bedsheets but the wicked-sharp quirk of a smirk, his eyes glowing devilish through the screen of his iPhone.

“Hey, asshole,” he greets him, in the background, Pete can see movement, can see multiple someones moving boxes and furniture around an apartment that’s mostly empty. He has this horrible, gut-snarled feeling that there’s a joke he’s not part of. “As you can see, I’m just in the process of moving out, didn’t want you around while I did it so I came up with a little activity to keep you out of my hair. Like a fucking _child_ , Pete, because that’s what you are — nothing but a spoilt little boy demanding his toys. I’m not your fucking toy.”

In his bedroom, Pete snarls. On the screen, Patrick continues, entirely oblivious. “So, I spoke to your wife. God, she’s _great_ , she’s funny, she’s smart, super goddamn pretty, you really fucked up there, buddy. She told me _all_ about you; bugging her phone? Seriously? Isolating her from her friends and family, bullying her, intimidating her, screwing with her birth control. _Fucking your marriage counsellor_. You know what she said to me? _At least he never hit me_. That’s the bar for you, isn’t it Pete? That’s the low fucking level you somehow managed to slither over for the course of your marriage.” He pauses, scratches his jaw and calls out an instruction to someone shifting his couch. His eyes slide back to the screen, to Pete. “Did you really think you’d get away with writing about me? That I wouldn’t find out? Bitch _please_ , you think I’d fuck the Chief of Police, the fucking _senator_ , all those CEOs and not have a couple directors on my books when I live in Los Angeles? The only thing I regret is not having a camera in your place to see what you look like right now. Honestly, though? I’m just glad I never have to see you or think about you ever again. I hope Ashlee takes you for every penny you have left. I _win_ , douchebag. Oh, and Pete?” He pauses, smiles wide, sends a wink into the camera. “Go fuck yourself.”

The screen dims to dark.

In his bedroom, frozen, Pete considers his options. This isn’t easy when his mind is racing, whirring, attempting to process the glaring reality of it. Patrick fucked him over, set the meeting up himself and snatched away Pete’s love song. These are not the actions of someone who appreciates the efforts that Pete has gone to. Ungrateful, conniving, backstabbing little whore.

Pete is forced to face the very real possibility that Patrick has removed himself entirely from Pete’s frame of reference. He has nothing to go on but a first name and a generic Midwest accent, a series of previous-life anecdotes that mean he has the wealth, resources and capacity to relocate himself just about anywhere in the United States or Europe.

Alone in an apartment with a mortgage that makes him wince, no job, no screenplay and nowhere to turn but the realistic possibility of his mom’s basement back in Chicago, Pete puts his fist through the screen of his MacBook.

Life — he swears — will _never_ treat him fairly.

*

Patrick loves New York. He’s missed it intensely, surprised by the ferocity of joy blooming bright beneath his lungs as he walks through Central Park. He hums Nat King Cole to himself as he walks, thumbing through his phone and confirming his afternoon appointment with a high-flying attorney from one of the cities big-name firms. It’s taken a while, but he thinks his reputation might be close to salvaged.

The city stretches under early summer sunlight, filtering through the trees as he makes his way towards home; a converted brownstone on a quiet, tree-lined street in one of the more exclusive parts of Manhattan. It’s the kind of place no one notices a changing roster of expensive cars at the curb outside of his building. After last time — and he tries very hard not to think about it — he enjoys the anonymity. Everyone in Los Angeles has a story, no one in New York wants to pry.

He kicks off his shoes, drops his keys onto the countertop and collapses on his couch, content for now to enjoy the silence and a good book. There’s close to two hours until his client arrives and Patrick isn’t expecting visitors, his thumb making his place in the latest Neil Gaiman as he considers the way the light plays across the ceiling through the window.

Patrick is happy now. Wary, sure. Less naive, less hopelessly trusting but in this, his anonymous sanctuary three thousand miles from a sociopath in West Hollywood, his life is precisely how he wants it to be. He’s been thinking about the future, considering a segue from sex work to something more orthodox. Maybe he could take up some of those promising offers that rolled in before he made the move to Paris. It’s something he’ll think about another day.

In the hallway, his doorbell buzzes.

It’s weird, Patrick thinks as he rolls to his feet and heads for the door. He’s not expecting any visitors.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, there we have it. 
> 
> Hope you’ve enjoyed reading along and, if you felt inclined, comments and kudos are always adored and well taken care of! 
> 
> See you guys at the next fic (hopefully!), it’s gonna be a riot and, I promise, nothing like this :D

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos are, as always, wonderful. I really enjoy hearing what you guys think.
> 
> You can also find me on tumblr @sn1tchesandtalkers.
> 
> See you next week. Same time, same place, same channel.


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